CHAPTER ELEVEN

The sensor/transmitter was the equivalent of a moron with a megaphone. It, and a power pack, were planted in an eons-old satellite in high orbit over Earth, part of the sky junk that made navigation on- and offworld so interesting. A tech had boarded the satellite just days after the summit had been announced. He positioned the bug, turned it on, took a moment to marvel at the primitive machines—clottin' light-optic computers—and was gone.

The transmitter waited, ignoring the flurry of ships approaching the planet. Too small. Too few.

Then it woke. Ships … many ships… many big ships.

It bleated twice on the assigned frequency, then fused into a solid lump of plas.

Sten shut the receiver down and tossed it into the pile in the center of the bunker.

"Our customers are on the way. Shall we?"

The team grabbed packs and headed for the ramped tunnel. All of them wore phototropic uniforms that would also give some shielding against pickup by thermal sensors. They weaseled their gear, including the long, heavy cylinders in padded, shoulder-strapped cases, into the open.

Havell touched a button, and a dim light shone from his notepad as he checked the satellite sked. "Clean for an hour and a half. Then we've got an overhead and an Eye."

"Still—use overhead cover," Sten ordered.

Valdiva whispered a question: "These, umm, bears you mentioned? Are they nocturnal?"

One N'ran rumbled a laugh. "No… but hugging contest… interesting."

Hugging? The bear would place third. Not to mention, Sten thought, what other instruments of death they were carrying. The cylinders with their sights and mounts—plus each being carried a combat knife, a single-shot completely suppressed projectile weapon, three types of grenades, and heavy, short-barreled "shotguns,"

drum-fed weapons that scattered highly explosive AM2 pellets as their charge. An excellent weapon for a barroom discussion.

Sten looked back at their hidey-hole and decided, not for the first time, that he was a perfectly lousy burrowing animal. If he had to buy it, he would prefer it be in the open.

They started off into the darkness.

In ten hours an incendiary charge in the pile of discarded gear, ration tins, and civilian clothing would go off. All of the team members, excepting the N'Ran, had worn membrane gloves since they had arrived on Earth, so not even the primitive fingerprint system could ID them. Their quarters in Coos Bay had been swept Mantis-clean. There could be no DNA or any other identification in the postbang investigation.

Each team member wore a vital-signs pack on his or her belt. Any change in the bearer—such as death—and the pack would detonate. There would not even be a corpse to autopsy.

With the exception of the cylinders, it was all perfectly normal gear for a Mantis mission.

Brigadier Mavis Sims had taken the same oath as Sten. But she chose to interpret it differently.

She could not remember having slept since she returned from the phony kriegsspiel and being recruited for the conspiracy.

There were five generations of Simses who had served the Empire. The family motto, just a touch embarrassing in its blatancy, was "Faithful unto Death." None of the Simses had abandoned that faith.

Now, deep in the heart of another sleepless, echoing night, Brigadier Sims decided she would not shirk it, either.

The atmosphere in the communication room of the main lodge had gone from high-pitched excitement to nervous boredom. Military techs had bustled about for hours as the Imperial fleet approached the Honjo system. The members of the council had literal front-row seats as the maneuvering commenced. A dazzling array of impressive commands were fired at the fleet commander. Responses, terse and warriorlike, crackled back. One entire com wall was ablaze with winking red and green lights marking the progress.

It was one helluva good show—to start with. But then the routine absolutely necessary for any large-scale action began to drag. And drag. And drag. There were endless countdowns at each stage. Then the clocks were reset again for another crucial juncture.

By the time the fleet had parked, pulled on its stealth cloak, and started baiting the hook for the Honjo, the privy council was considering canceling the whole thing for lack of interest.

Not for the first time in the past two hours, Kyes compared the action to the few combat livies he had seen. He could understand now why the livie makers steered well clear of any hint of reality. In a livie, all that was needed was a maximum three-minute conference of the warrior brass to set the target. That would be followed by a "what it all means to us" scene, in which each character mused on his or her lifelong goals and objectives. If he or she was warm and cuddly, the character was usually doomed. If cynical and bitter, that character was sure to see the light in the gore that followed. Then entire legions of fleets would be launched in blaze of fast-cutting action. The formula would require a momentary victory, followed by a setback in which all seemed lost.

And finally the bravery and cunning of the heroes would conquer all.

Kyes did not like livies. But he liked this show less.

He stirred slightly as the little tacship crossed the invisible line that marked the beginning of Honjo territory. At any moment there would be a loud protest broadcast by the prey, backed up by a small, heavily armed patrol to warn the tacship away.

The plan was for the tacship to ignore the warning. If that went on long enough, the Honjo patrol would certainly fire. Then the wrath of the Imperial fleet would descend on the helpless Honjo to repay them for their temerity.

For a long time, there was nothing at all.

The Kraas sent out for more food. The big banquet table had already been emptied twice. Most of it had been drunk or devoured by the twins. They ate until even the skin of the fat one was stretched to bursting. Then they excused themselves, so that the obese one could help "Sis" into a lavatory. Loud sounds of vomiting followed. Then the two exited, the thin one flushed with effort and glowing with saintly joy at her after-the-fact temperance.

At first, Malperin, Kyes, and Lovett had been revolted. But the second time around, they became oddly fascinated. It was certainly more exciting than what was going on up on the big com board.

As the waiters were hauling in more supplies, a voice crackled out. A Honjo voice!

"This is Honjo Center to unknown tacship. Please identify yourself."

The tacship was silent, and the excitement in the com room came sparking back.

Each of the five leaned forward, waiting.

"Honjo Center, to unknown tacship. You are in violation of our borders. Turn back.

I repeat, turn back!"

Still no response, just as according to plan. On the big screen, they could see the tacship moving inalterably on. Another flurry of warnings came from the Honjo, with similar negative results. They could see the small patrol now. A tech whispered to Kyes that the monitors showed that they had gone from alert to full armament. Any moment, a missile would be fired.

Then there was a loud, unconscious groan. Against all predictions, the Honjo patrol was retreating!

"Unknown tacship," came the voice of the Honjo commander. "Be warned! We are recording this violation of our sovereignty. And it shall be immediately reported to the proper authorities."

"Wot's bleedin' happening?" one Kraa burst out. "Why don't the bastards shoot?"

"Clottin' cowards," the other screamed. "Fight, you drakhs. Fight!"

Despite that odd cheering section, the Honjo did just the opposite. The patrol sensibly turned tail and ran.

The council members were mortified. Techs ducked their angry glares about the room, looking for someplace to set responsibility.

"What will we do?" Lovett hissed.

"Clot 'em. Let's go anyways!" the fat Kraa said.

"I don't know," Malperin said. "Are you sure we ought to? I mean, doesn't this change everything?"

Kyes thought it did—but he was not sure. They were so close. The patrol was tiny, the fleet waiting. All that AM2 just sitting there. Maybe…

At that moment, the com screen blanked. Then the startled council members found themselves staring at Poyndex, their chief of Mercury Corps.

The colonel made no excuses or apologies for the interruption. His face was pale. His manner, bloodless. "I have been notified that an assassination team is at this moment in place and prepared to strike.

"Gentlebeings, you will immediately put yourselves in the hands of your security personnel. There is no cause for extreme alarm. If you follow security procedures, all will be well."

The council members jolted around as the door burst open and grim-faced security beings pushed into the room. Then the five rulers of all the Eternal Emperor had once surveyed allowed themselves to be hustled away like little children astray in a wilderness.

Somewhere in the far-off Honjo system a fleet awaited orders.

The team closed in on the late Sullamora's estate. At first they had traveled fast.

There were still gravsleds overhead that were clearly not Security vehicles.

At daybreak they had sheltered in a river cave that F'lesa had pinpointed. They had eaten a tasteless meal and tried to sleep, only to be awakened by earthquake rumbles.

Quick hand signals were exchanged—reflexively, without orders, they had gone nonverbal, even for whispers. The signals gave redundant, obvious information, variations of "Target on ground," but they broke the silent isolation.

Now, any overhead had to be considered hostile.

Just at dusk, they moved again. Ten kilometers outside the estate, the first passive sensors were encountered. They were quickly given electronic "You don't see anything"

signals, and the team moved on.

The sensors became closer together, and more sensitive. But again they were spoofed successfully. Then there was an old road, with a patrol, its time passage exactly what Dum and Dee had filmed. Routine and proper security are oxymoronic. Roving five-man patrols. Mantis, most likely. Again, evaded. A N'Ran crouched to Sten and signed scornfully: "I could dance."

They went on.

A kilometer or so outside the estate, Sten found a hilltop with a decent line of sight and fair overhead cover. "Here. Set up," he signed.

The cases were opened. Two missiles came out. They looked to be standard Imperial short-range, self-homing, fire-and-forget, ground-to-ground weapons. They were not.

The propellant had been replaced by a reduced amount of a slow-burning solid fuel.

The missiles would be fired from very short, closely estimated range. More explosive went in. The homing mechanisms also went into the trash. More bang went in their place. Space was left for a primitive guidance system near the missile's stern. A small pitot was welded into the base.

Telescoping rods were untelescoped, crossed, and pinned together into simple, X-shaped launching stands. The Archulers unshouldered their packs. Each pack contained a two-kilometer reel of chained molecular wire. One end of the wire connected to the missile, the other to a monopod-mounted passive light-intensification sight with a single, small joystick. The N'ran were ready.

The rest of the team stripped off the phototropic uniforms. Under them, they wore Imperial combat fatigues, exactly the same as those worn by the guard units inside the estate. Sten motioned them down the hill.

More sensors. Physical security barriers, including some archaic razor-wire. Booby traps, passive and active. Guards.

Easy. No problem. A little too easy?

Shut up. A hollow. Signal—flat of hand, going down. Needless. The team dropped.

Just in front of them was the final wire—and the compound.

Now the bloodbath should begin—preferably on one side only.

Phase One, scheduled to begin when Sten keyed a tone-com, would be the firing of the first missile. The second would follow ten seconds later. Sten had felt—correctly—that any modern guidance system would be countermeasured or just blocked. So he went primitive.

The guidance system was via that wire the Archulars had lugged in.

Wire guidance had been discarded millennia earlier as an absurdity. Its faults were many: The operator was required to remain in one place and guide the missile to its target. He must have line of sight to the target. The target might also be looking his way and have some objection to being rocketed. Not a problem for Sten—he was back-stabbing, not playing Leonidas.

The wire could snag or break. Not this wire.

But the biggest problem had been the real catch-22. If the missile traveled at any kind of speed, it would take a guidance operator who could also dance on a rolling ball to hit the target rather than over- or under-shoot or, worse, send the missile into out-of-control yawing. They had to slow the missile down. That would give the target time to acquire and destroy the missile and most likely its operator, as well, but that was not a real factor. Luxury estates did not shoot back—Sten hoped.

First the missiles would sequentially impact on the target area, resulting in chaos, flames, and screams. Sten and his team would arrow into that chaos with "Rescue" in their shouts and murder in their hearts. They would terminate any surviving council members, then withdraw, break contact, and head for the pickup point.

The tone-corn would also signal Kilgour to bring the tacship to the surface and low-fly upriver to a preset RP.

Then they could all go home and get drunk.

Stop hesitating. Go, lad.

Sten touched the button.

One…

The first missile was launched and nap-of-the-earth guided into the estate's main building.

Three seconds…

Faye Archuler pitched a sausage charge over the wire and pulled the fuse cord.

Six…

The first missile "crept" forward, at little more than 200 kph.

Eight…

The charge exploded, slicing the fence open like a gate.

Ten…

The second missile launched.

Eleven…

Sten shouted, "Grenades!" The team thumbed timers and hurled grenades into the compound.

Thirteen…

Sten was the first on his feet and charging through the hole in the wire. It may have saved his life.

Fifteen…

The grenades exploded, huge flares broadcasting confusion through visible-invisible spectrums.

Eighteen seconds…

Imperial Security sprang the trap.

Two armored gravsleds floated into sight, their multiple chainguns yammering. A missile launcher snapped up from its silo, tracking.

Twenty-one…

Sten's first missile was just four seconds from impact. The gravsled chainguns'

sensors found the incoming missile. Solid collapsed-uranium slugs sheeted through the air—and the missile shattered!

Twenty-four…

The missile launcher acquired its target. Twenty counterbattery missiles spat into the night.

Twenty-eight seconds…

The missiles impacted on Sten's launch site. The two N'Ran disappeared in a howl of explosions.

The second missile, no longer under command, soared vertically.

Twenty-nine seconds…

Akashi's boot heel slammed down on a mine sowed less than an hour before. The charge took his legs off at the groin, and shrapnel scythed through Montoya.

The nearby blast caught Sten, flipping him up and back into the wire. He hung, limply.

Montoya's vital-signs pack blew, purple in the night.

Thirty-one…

High overhead, Sten's second missile exploded harmlessly.

Thirty-six…

The guns on the gravsleds tracked down… ammunition drums clanged as the loads automatically changed and the guns yammered on.

Larry and Faye Archuler were cut nearly in half.

Thirty-nine…

A sniper found the running Havell in his sights… lost him in a grenade blast… then touched the trigger. The AM2 round blew Havell's chest away.

Forty-two…

Corum and Valdiva zagging… rolling… firing… The chainguns found and smashed them.

Sten found himself flat. Stunned. Disoriented. He started to his feet—and the Mantis reflexes took over. He rolled, over and over, somehow keeping hold of his broken-stocked scattergun. Explosive rounds stitched centimeters over his head, and he was back in the hollow. Safety. Stay here, his mind said. They won't see you. They won't find you.

His body disobeyed. He ripped out of his combat harness, thumbed the switch on a grenade, and threw the vest back, into the wire.

The first grenade detonated—and the others went off in sympathetic explosions.

Sten was up, stumbling. Away. You're blown. Move! The others! Clot the others—they're dead! Follow the damned orders I'm issuing!

A five-man patrol came out of the smoke. Gun up, trigger held back—and red spray instead of men, AM2 bullets exploding the razor fence behind them and its sensors.

Through, skin ripping.

Water-sound. Run, damn you. It doesn't hurt.

A bank. Flat-dive over—fearing rocks, hoping water. Neither. Smash into the cushion… the ripping cushion of rusted high-piled concertina wire.

The knife out of your arm, man.

Slashing.

Nothing to slash. Somehow the knife was in its "sheath," and Sten was crashing forward, into the water and through the shallows.

Someone behind him was firing.

Bullet-splashes.

Deeper. Dive. Go under. Hold your clottin' breath. You don't need oxygen.

Now. Surface. One gasp—go under. Swim if you can. Let the current carry you.

Away. Down the river.

One hand moved inside his uniform, found a tiny box, slid the cover back on the box, and pressed a stud.

Swim. You can.

Safety.

Downriver. Alex. The pickup.

Sten knew he would never make it.

Kilgour paced the control room of the tacship, waiting. It was not much of a pace—no more than four steps at the maximum before he would slam into something.

The ship was grounded on the river beach chosen for the pickup point. Alex had the hatch open. His orders were clear and exact: remain in place until one hour before daybreak or if discovered. If no one is at the pickup point, return to the ocean. Try to remain near mouth of the river. The team would try, if the pickup was blown, to E&E

to the ruins of Reedsport. If no contact was made, he was to head offplanet and report.

In the not-very-distance, Alex could hear the sounds of hell. He hoped it was being given, not gotten. Once more he cursed Sten, then broke off in midobscenity as an ululation began from a com speaker.

One screen showed a projection of the target area. Just outside it, a tiny red light blinked—from the river. Mid-river, the map told him.

"Clot!" The obscenity was heartfelt. The light—and signal—came from a standard search-and-rescue transmitter. Each member of the team had carried one, with orders to activate it only if they missed pickup. Certainly not anywhere close to the target zone.

An SAR light. One.

Kilgour zoomed the projection back, to see if there were others. Nothing.

His fingers found a mike. "This is pickup. Go."

Nothing but dead air. The light continued to blink.

Kilgour took about a nanosecond to decide that those clear and exact orders could get stuffed. Seconds later, he lifted the tacship, banged the drive selection into Yukawa power—and be damned who could see the torch—and drove forward, upriver.

A screen flashed at him. Six gravsleds.

Alex took one hand from the controls and slapped a switch. The tacship's chainguns blasted. The tacship yawed, ripping through the top of a redwood grove, and almost went in before Alex had control again. He shot through the falling debris of the gravsleds and a voice from a speaker smashed at him:

"Unidentified tacship! Ground, or we fire!"

Alex was forced to lift out of the gorge. He banked the ship into a tight spiral, took three steps away from the control board, and hit all launch on the long-activated weapons panel. Eight Goblin XIX's salvoed upward. He found time to hope the medium-range antiship missiles' brains were awake, and there he was back at the controls, diving down into the gorge; the cliffs dropped away, and Kilgour was almost overflying the blinking light—and into the alerted target zone.

He spun ship, still under power, his stabilizing and nav-gyros screaming, killed power, and went to McLean power.

Far overhead, a nuclear fire blossomed.

Kilgour splashed down and was at the hatch. Just upstream, a body floated down toward him, motionless. Then an arm lifted, trying to swim.

Kilgour stretched… almost fell in… then had the body by its ripped coveralls. He flipped the man into the ship and was back behind the controls and under full power, hands darting across the controls, barely finding time to cycle the lock closed as the tacship clawed for altitude, straight up, toward and through the nuclear blast that had formerly been an Imperial warship.

It may have been the instant fury of Kilgour's reactions, or just the luck of the Scots.

But he cleared planet—and vanished into silence under full AM2 drive.

Behind him Sten lay unconscious. His mind concussed and his body, having done its duty and preserved the organism, shut down until repairs were made.