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CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Something wasn't quite right. Henry Havelock was certain of it as soon as he entered Kinsella's portrait-heavy private office and she looked up from her desk at him.

"You wanted to see me?" she inquired shortly, motioning him to a chair as though as an afterthought.

"Yes, Director. It's about the matter we discussed last week."

Kinsella's gaze sharpened. Her eyes looked a little bloodshot as they studied him. Hung over? he wondered. It might account for the little peculiarities in her behavior he was having so much trouble putting his finger on.

"You mean to say," she demanded, "that you're still trying to get me to authorize another attempt to attack the Enclave? After the way you landed me neck-deep in shit last time?"

Havelock thought he detected a note of calculation behind her irritability. He discounted it and met the objection head-on. "As you'll recall, Director, the Central Committee okayed it in general terms."

"Yes—subject to a warning not to step on your dick again! And," she added venomously, "you haven't even been able to deal with that rogue agent—Roark, wasn't that his name?—inside the Enclave."

Havelock winced. The failure of the attempt on Roark and Doyle had been impossible to keep from Kinsella, although Rivera—wearing her Company-authorized hat—had at least had the presence of mind to conceal Doyle's presence on the hit list. "Yes and no, Director. Granted, we didn't succeed in terminating him. But our agents in the Enclave have reported no indication of his presence since then. The attempt must have alarmed the Lokaron into placing him in such deep security that he is effectively neutralized. In my considered judgment, he no longer represents an unacceptable wild card in the game."

"Oh?" Kinsella gave an arch look that Havelock found difficult to interpret. "But that still doesn't explain why, in your `considered judgment,' we should try it again now."

"Why not, Director? The original idea—the real idea, of creating a crisis with the Lokaron that would bring down the present Central Committee—is still as sound as ever."

"But you thought an unsuccessful attempt would do that. And it didn't, did it?"

"I continue to maintain that it would have, had it actually occurred, even though the abortive attack admittedly fell short. But at all events, a successful one will surely suffice. And the time is ripe for that, given the apparent removal of Roark from the equation."

Kinsella appeared to cogitate. "All right. Draft a proposal for me to submit to the Central Committee."

"I suggest, Director, that we not bother the Central Committee with things it doesn't need to know. At any rate, there isn't time; the circumstances won't remain optimal for much longer. We should simply proceed on the strength of the earlier go-ahead we received for the overall concept. In fact . . . " Havelock made his eyebrows arch as though with the dawning of an idea. "It occurs to me that we could maximize the impact of our success."

"What do you mean?"

"Request a special emergency meeting of the Central Committee at the time the attack is scheduled to commence. What could be more dramatic than an announcement of success even as it is occurring?"

"And what could be more embarrassing than a pratfall with the full Central Committee watching? Do you have any idea of the chance you're asking me to take?"

"I'll attend as well, Director. That should tell you something about my confidence that the plan will succeed," Havelock said smoothly. "And in fact you'll be running no risk at all. I'll give you, in advance, a signed document accepting full responsibility in the event of failure. Not, to repeat, that I expect failure. I anticipate a triumph that will silence your critics. It will also magnify your stature in the eyes of the existing power structure—a useful insurance policy, in the event that same power structure manages to survive the crisis we'll have created with the Lokaron."

"Hmm . . . Yes, something to be said for covering all bases. Very well. What date and time shall I give them for this special meeting?"

Havelock didn't hesitate. "Three days from now, at twenty-two hundred hours."

"What? So soon?"

"All preliminary preparations have been made, Director. Certain last-minute personnel shifts will have to be made. But the time I've proposed will, I believe, be the optimum one."

"All right. Prepare a detailed operational plan—for me and not for the Central Committee."

"It's already prepared, Director. You'll have it later this afternoon."

As he departed, Havelock continued to puzzle over the curious oddities in Kinsella's behavior. Time of the month, perhaps? He dismissed the thought with contempt. No time to worry about such trivia. Matters are coming to a head. It was time to give Rivera her official instructions . . . and to transmit through Kovac, as head of the command cell, her real instructions. And, at the same time, I'll be delivering the instructions that really matter. 

It was, he reflected, ironic. It never seemed to occur to the Eaglemen that the cell system they'd employed so successfully could be used to conceal a whole dimension of their organization from its own official command structure. But, then, they trust me. The concept of trust was too alien for him to fully understand; but he could analyze, from the outside, the way it affected other people's actions, and exploit the knowledge so gained. Thus he had done when he'd first set up his secret cell, composed of hard-case Eaglemen who firmly believed they were serving as a last-resort counterweight to a command cell whose members' commitment to the cause wasn't absolutely above suspicion. Not even the Rogovon knew about it.

It was a useful thing to have in reserve—so much so that he'd held it back at the time of the first attempt to move against the Enclave. Now, though, the time had come to deploy it.

Isn't life fun? he thought with uncomplicated happiness, as he turned his mind to the problem of how he would employ the Rogovon to wipe out the secret cell after it had outlived its usefulness.

 

After the door closed behind Havelock, Colleen Kinsella took several deep breaths and brought herself under control. That oily, two-timing bastard! I thought I was going to blow up in his smarmy face! Tightly contained rage stabbed painfully at her abdomen. The payoff for stringing him along had better be worth it! 

She forced herself to think calmly. What had he meant by that bogus afterthought about calling the Central Committee together to witness her triumph? The obvious motive would be to make me look like a jackass when the attack fails. But since the attack is really just a provocation to let the Rogovon take direct action against Earth, what would be the point? And why would he have offered to provide me with a full-responsibility confession? 

She shook her head. It was like everything else about his scheme: unexceptionably logical. Too bad the basic idea can't be salvaged somehow. . . .  

None of that! She bent down and began keying a combination of numbers into the electronic lock of one of her desk drawers. It opened, and she withdrew the small communicator Roark and Doyle had provided. It used neutrinos to send messages into which no equipment of Earthly manufacture could tap—and hopefully no Lokaron equipment would be positioned to do so, in the absence of any reason to anticipate such messages. The time had come to use it, and let her new allies know that things were in motion.

Roark responded to her call. He and Katy were back in the Enclave, secreted on the uppermost levels of the Hov-Korth tower. Svyatog had spirited them there as part of a supply shipment—a disguise that was, they hoped, as effective as it was uncomfortable. Fortunately, it would only be necessary to keep the Rogovon in the dark for a short time.

Not, it seemed, short enough for Roark. "Why three and a half days?" he demanded.

"He made some noise about `last-minute personnel shifts.' Anyway, what are you complaining about? Surely there's a lot you can be doing before then."

"We can't do a damned thing but stew. Remember, we can't risk tipping our hand until they actually move."

"Well, then, you can keep one of you beside your communicator at all times. I'm going to be calling in with new developments as they break, and it won't be any time to play telephone tag!" Kinsella broke the connection irritably, and prepared to call Earl Drummond . . . but then paused. She thought for a moment, then completed the connection.

She gave him the same summary she'd given Roark. "So," she concluded, "you'll be getting the same invitation as everybody else on the Central Committee. I'll be using the main conference room at Company headquarters—it's the only room there that's big enough. But, just in case, let me tell you about the emergency egress route I had built into it. . . . "

 

For Roark, the next three days stretched like a wire drawn to the snapping point and twanged by each little irritation.

At last, Kinsella called in—hurriedly, as she was already late for the emergency session of the Central Committee she herself had called—with the word that the attack was going in as scheduled. Roark slapped the disconnect button without even pausing to acknowledge, and whirled to face Katy. "It's time!" Then he spoke to the room in general. "Did you get that?"

"Yes," came the voice of Svyatog's translator. He and Huruva'Strigak waited in the ultrahigh-security precincts of the latter's office, where a hookup had enabled them to listen to Kinsella's message. "Our guards are even now taking up positions around the Gev-Rogov tower—too late, unfortunately, to stop a shuttle which just departed. They are also taking control of the human workers' quarters. You need to—"

"—Get there at once. We're on our way!" They sprinted for the door and continued at a dead run, out onto a landing flange where a little open-topped flitter waited under the cold winter stars. Lifting off under a powered-down version of the shuttles' drives, it circled around the tower's pinnacle and then arrowed downward, shoving them back into their seats with uncompensated g-forces. An equally extreme deceleration stopped them just short of the high-speed crash their senses had screamed was about to happen, and they descended to the low-lying human dormitory.

Entering, they walked into pandemonium. Tall blue-skinned Lokaron security guards with intimidatingly advanced-looking weapons were herding a crowd of vociferously angry but terrified humans into the cafeteria. Ignoring the looks he and Katy got, he approached the guard with the badge of rank on the chest of his black coverall. "Have you got them separated out?"

"Yes. One resisted and had to be stunned." The guards' carbine-sized laser weapons had a nonlethal setting, creating an ionized path for a high-voltage electric pulse that administered a temporarily incapacitating shock. "They are being held separately." The guard pointed to the far corner of the large room, where three men tended a fourth, unconscious one under the watchful eyes of two alien guards.

As Roark and Katy approached, the three looked up with varying expressions. One pretended—an instant too late—not to recognize them. "You!" snarled Pirelli, as Chen, wide-eyed, gasped, "Ben!"

"Yeah, Jerry, it's me. And this is Katy Doyle, whom you two probably don't know about, not being Eaglemen . . . unlike Stoner." He turned to the one with the bogus blank look.

"Huh?" Stoner's face was all innocence. "What are you talking about?"

Chen gaped. "Yeah, Ben—what do you mean, `Eagleman'? Stoner, here, is one of our people. He's been here since before you were . . . turned." His voice died on the last word, as though he was still having trouble accepting what he'd been told.

"It's true, Jerry. He's an Eagleman—"

"Like me." Chen and Pirelli stared openmouthed as Rivera strode up. Stoner bared his teeth, all pretense gone, clearly restrained from springing for her only by the Lokaron lasers. She swept her eyes over all three of them. "Look, we don't have much time, so for now you're just going to have to shut up, listen, and follow orders. Chen, Pirelli: yes, I'm an Eagleman, one of several put into this operation by Havelock—who is the leader of the organization." She turned from their shock-marbled faces and faced the silently raging Stoner. "Jim, I've spilled all this because I've learned Havelock is a traitor—not just to the Eaglemen, not just to America, but to humanity. He's selling us out to a faction of the Lokaron. And he's making his move now. What we were told about tonight's attack was a crock."

"But," Stoner blurted, in defiance of Rivera's ban on speech, "if this is true, and you knew it, why did we go ahead and disable the security sensor system earlier tonight?"

"There's no time to give you the full story. Just take my word that in order for the Rogovon we're working with"—she indicated the guards—"to take action against the ones who've bought Havelock, we have to let the attack actually happen." She paused, gauging the expression that had come over Stoner's face at the words the Lokaron we're working with. "Yeah, Jim, I know. I've got a lot of explaining to do. But I don't have time to do it just now. I'll tell you one thing, though. In the process of stopping Havelock, we're going to do what we Eaglemen have always dreamed of doing: smash the EFP and restore the Constitution." She turned to Chen and Pirelli. "Yes, that's right. And even though you two aren't Eaglemen, I have a feeling it's what you want, too. And you'll hear about it later tonight—from the President himself." She allowed a brief pause, then put the whip-crack of command into her voice. "One thing hasn't changed, though: I'm still in charge of everybody here, Eaglemen and otherwise. So let's get moving! Take your orders from Roark and Doyle."

"First of all," Roark began, "we need to get these people here out of danger, in case things get fucked up and the attack proceeds further than we plan to let it. Jerry, coordinate with old Koebel and get some kind of organization going. Use your authority as a Federal agent—the time for secrecy is past. Assign some people with first-aid training to take care of him." He indicated the man who'd been stunned. "Then join us. The rest of you, come on. We're going to meet the attackers outside."

"Right," they chorused. Chen started to hurry away, then paused and gave Roark's arm a squeeze. "I never really believed you'd turned traitor. You may be an asshole, but you're not that kind of asshole."

Before Roark could frame a response, the dull crump! of a distant explosion brought the hubbub in the cafeteria to a shocked silence. Then the crackle of automatic fire mingled with the closer sound of high-pitched Lokaron voices.

"The attack's started already!" barked Rivera. "Move!"

 

The hubbub in the Company's main conference room subsided as Henry Havelock entered. He surveyed the Central Committee members, milling about in confused tension, and saw thirty years' accumulation of intellectual constipation. More than that, actually, he corrected himself. After all, the average age of the room was well over sixty, and few of them had exhibited any detectable neural activity since leaving college—nor even before that, except at the very low level required to parrot long-discredited but still-orthodox collectivist dogmas. And since then . . . well, kissing the ass of whoever's above you on the ladder while simultaneously stepping on the face of whoever's below doesn't even take much physical coordination. 

Something bothered him, though—something not quite right. Before he could put his finger on it, Vera Ziegler separated herself from the crowd and strode forward, pointing her finger in a way she doubtless thought suggested a cry of J'accuse! "There you are! Perhaps you can provide an explanation, since Director Kinsella has vanished."

"Vanished?" Havelock frowned. This was unplanned-for.

"Yes! She was here when we arrived, but no one's seen her for several minutes. I warn you, this treatment of those of us who form the vanguard of enlightened, progressive thought will not be tolerated! There will be a full investigation of this latest outrage by the military-industrial complex and its intelligence apparatus. . . . " Ziegler's honking trailed off as two men in light combat dress, carrying minimacs, emerged from the door Havelock had used and deployed left and right along the wall behind him. Two more men followed, struggling under the weight of what Ziegler, had it not been for the ignorance of military matters in which she took such simple pride, might have recognized as a 5.57mm caseless assault chaingun. The feet of the support weapon's tripod crashed solidly down onto the floor, and its ammunition cassette was clicked into place—sounds which seemed louder than they were in the uncomprehending hush that had descended.

The noise seemed to break Ziegler's uncharacteristic verbal paralysis. "Havelock, what is the meaning of this? I demand—"

"Oh, shut up," Havelock told her, fulfilling a wish of years' standing. Her mouth formed a circle of speechless shock. At the same instant, he reached into his coat, withdrew a small autopistol, and fired point-blank.

There was no visible entry wound, for the bullet went through her wide-open mouth. She died just as she lived, Havelock thought with an inward chuckle. But the soft-nosed slug blew out the back of her head. In the stunned silence, Havelock observed the dark reddish-oozing mass that lay on the floor a few yards behind her collapsed form. So she did have something in there after all! Then he turned, stepped aside, and nodded to the chaingun crew, while hastily inserting a pair of earplugs.

It was well that he did so, for the chaingun crashed into a continuous explosion that was, in this enclosed space, ear-shattering—a din in which the screams were inaudible. The sleet of lead swept back and forth across the crowd like a scythe, ripping limbs from trunks, blasting through bodies and sending great gouts of blood and ruined internal organs flying into the faces of those behind, who had mere fractional seconds of horrified awareness left before they, too, were blown apart. Then, abruptly, the chaingun ceased firing, and the only sound was a weak moaning that arose from a few still-alive throats, mostly belonging to people half-buried under heaps of shattered bodies. The two men with minimacs advanced across the room, their bootsoles making little splashing sounds in the blood and other fluids. There were a few stutters of autoburst fire, and then silence.

Well, thought Havelock, looking through the acrid haze of smoke at the abattoir that had been the Central Committee of the Earth First Party, the country ought to put up a statue of me for that. Come to think of it, I will put one up. 

And yet, something still nagged at him—a sense that something was missing. Something . . . or somebody.

Oh, yes; Ziegler did mention that Kinsella had left. Too bad, but not crucial.

Still . . . isn't there somebody else missing as well? 

He dismissed the matter and gestured to his men. They departed, moving through the deserted corridors of a building whose few occupants at this time of night had already been dealt with. They emerged on the top deck of the parking facility, in time to see a Lokaron shuttle descending in a blaze of running lights and the bluish-white glow of its drive's dissipated waste heat. Havelock could hear numerous sirens in the distance—the sound of D.C. officialdom's response to the blatant violation of its airspace. But such things had now ceased to matter, though the bureaucracy didn't know it yet.

The shuttle touched down with scarcely a bump. Love to know how the Lokaron do it, Havelock thought as he advanced across the deck. The shuttle's ramp lowered with a whine and a frost of escaping steam in the chill night air. A Lokaron figure descended, silhouetted against the interior lights.

"Your instructions have been carried out, lord," Havelock murmured. Those instructions—to decapitate the EFP—had been given at his own suggestion, but stressing that fact would serve no useful purpose at the moment.

"Good. And the data we require?" Valtu'Trovon extended a six-digited hand.

"Here, lord." Havelock handed over a disc containing the kind of detailed information on Cheyenne Mountain's subterranean layout necessary to plan a precision strike.

"Good," Valtu repeated. Without another word, he turned back toward the ramp. Havelock started to follow him as per their agreement. Then, reaching the ramp, Valtu gestured to someone inside.

Hmm . . . Havelock frowned. He's acting oddly. I'll be able to handle him, of course. Still, can't hurt to— 

Valtu hurried up the ramp. Above, atop the shuttle's nose, a recessed turret extruded itself with a low hum and began to swivel, revealing what looked like the mouth of a weapon.

Wait a minute! This isn't right— 

It was Havelock's last thought, as the plasma weapon turned his private universe into something indistinguishable from the surface of a sun.

The turret tracked back and forth, spitting plasma bolts in a rapid-fire crackle. Of Havelock and his men, not even ashes remained.

 

Inside the shuttle, Wersov'Vrahn spoke diffidently to Valtu. "Shall we destroy this building as we depart?"

"No. There's no point. And we must proceed without delay to meet Krondathu." The Rogovon Rogusharath-class strike cruiser was already on its way Earthward, and Valtu, no space navigator and therefore irritably dependent on those who were, wanted nothing to jeopardize his rendezvous with it. "Besides, I just got a disturbing report from our people still in the Enclave. There have been some odd movements of Harathon security personnel. It appears that the attack may have been compromised."

"But . . . how?"

"I don't know. It's probably nothing. Still, we'll take no chances. Lift off at once. And while enroute, download the contents of this disc to Krondathu."

"At once, sir." Wersov passed the order to the shuttle pilot.

 

Peering cautiously from underneath the barely raised cover of the air vent, their eyes still half dazzled by the blinding plasma bolts, the two humans watched the Rogovon shuttle lift off, swing its nose around, and plunge into the night sky at a seemingly impossible acceleration. It was soon lost among the stars.

They looked at each other, then glanced at where Havelock had stood before being consumed by star-fire, then looked at each other again.

"What the hell is really going on here?" breathed Colleen Kinsella. Her face was slick with sweat, and not just from the bloom of heated air that had rushed outward from the plasma weapon.

"Damned if I know," Earl Drummond grunted. "But we'd better get on that fancy communicator in your office and let our people inside the Enclave know what's happened."

"Yeah. I think you're right."

They closed the cover and descended, retracing the route through the ventilation system that had taken them from the main conference room just before it had been turned into a slaughterhouse.

 

The attackers advanced through grounds landscaped in accordance with unnervingly alien aesthetic precepts, and they occasionally exchanged nervous glances. The lack of opposition was eerie.

Despite their nervousness, they didn't open fire immediately when a line of five figures stepped out and deployed across their path. The figures were, after all, human.

A moment of silent uncertainty passed. Then a figure—female, small—stepped out from the skirmish line of new arrivals and saluted the attacking force's leader. "Everything's secured in here, Andy."

"Good job, Ada." Andrew Kovac turned and faced the mass of stunned incomprehension behind him. "All right, people, stand down. As of now, the attack is terminated. Some of you know why." He didn't say, the Eaglemen among you. One shock at a time was enough. "As for everybody else, all you need to know for now is that this whole operation was motivated by high-level treason, and that we had to go through the motions of penetrating the Enclave in order to prove it. Now you can be told the whole truth . . . and the President is about to tell it to you!"

The combat-dressed men gaped at each other, slowly lowering their weapons, and the words the President rose repeatedly above the hushed murmur. Kovac smiled and raised his voice. "That's right: the President himself! In fact, we're a few minutes behind schedule, so his address to the nation should have begun already." He reached inside his camo fatigues and pulled out a small portable radio. He switched it on and turned up the volume as far as it would go. "Gather around and listen. This thing doesn't have much of a speaker."

A voice that was not one of the regular announcers of any of the nearby D.C. stations was just finishing a stammering introduction. Then came the unmistakable voice of John Morrison, thin and tinny in the outdoor air.

 

"My fellow Americans: even as I speak to you tonight, a drama is already unfolding. A drama of dark treason and frightening danger, but one whose conclusion is a new beginning for our nation . . . a new dawn of the—"

The roar of an assault-rifle shattered the night, drowning out the thin voice. Kovac's combat dress stopped the first few slugs, but their force sent him staggering backward. Then the tracery of automatic fire reached his unprotected face, which exploded in blood. As he toppled over, half a dozen of the men he had commanded sprang forward and leveled their weapons, some at their own fellows and some at Rivera and her companions. The killer stepped between the two groups. "I am Captain Terence Fannin, and I am assuming command by authority of the ultimate high command of the Eaglemen. Yes, that's right," he continued, raising his voice over the sudden hubbub. "Major Kovac was an Eagleman too—but a traitor, along with the rest of the command cell. The rest of you can join us now, and we'll finish cleaning out this nest of alien monsters!"

He paused expectantly, leaving the alternative to joining unstated. Into the silence came the President's voice, from Kovac's radio where it lay on the ground.

 

"—and thus the treason of Henry Havelock has been exposed, thanks to the vigilance and patriotism of various people—including members of the Eaglemen, of which organization he was the clandestine leader, but which he betrayed just as he betrayed everyone with whom he ever dealt—"

Fannin snarled and raised a booted foot to smash the radio into silence. . . .

From behind Rivera and her fellows came the noise and glare of alien weaponry. A ragged line of Harathon security guards backed into the scene, firing back at advancing Rogovon. Fannin froze, as stunned as all the other humans.

It was all Rivera needed.

Launching herself into a flying side-kick from her deceptively passive stance, she made her body into a projectile that struck Fannin and sent him reeling back, toppling over Kovac's corpse. Then she was atop him, pulling his combat helmet back so that its chin strap choked him and then yanking it savagely sideways. The snapping sound was audible even above the alien firefight.

"Take them!" she yelled to Kovac's former command.

The spell broke and everyone present exploded into action. Three members of Havelock's clandestine cell went down in a spray of blood, chewed up by automatic fire whose volume overcame their body armor. Of the other three, Chen and Roark took on one each while they were still too stunned to use their weapons. The third cut Pirelli down with a short-range burst, then brought his assault-rifle around—slowly, or so it seemed to Roark—to bear on Rivera.

"Ada!" he yelled. At appreciably the same instant, he finished off his opponent with a chop to the Adam's apple and plunged forward.

He was almost in time.

The assault-rifle barked. Rivera wasn't wearing body armor. The slug plowed unimpeded through her upper right chest.

Roark crashed into the man who'd fired, getting him in a headlock from behind. Then Katy was there too, facing Rivera's immobilized killer, with a combat knife she'd scooped up from the fallen Fannin. She brought the knife swiftly in, low, and then up. Roark didn't consider himself inordinately impressionable, but he knew he'd be a while forgetting the man's scream.

He didn't let himself pause. He dropped the thrashing form and whirled to face the other humans. "Move, damn it! Reinforce these Lokaron!" He indicated the steadying Harathon line. After a barely perceptible hesitation, the humans obeyed. But they were rolling now, and they launched a counterattack that the Harathon could only follow. The Rogovon fell back in disarray, and the sounds of firing diminished.

Roark turned back and knelt on the ground where Katy sat beside the now-avenged Kovac, cradling a smaller female form in her arms. A few feet away, the radio lay unheeding. As the sounds of battle died away, John Morrison's voice could be heard again.

 

"—further declare the Earth First Party dissolved. It is a dead hand that has gripped our nation's heart for too long. As soon as the current state of emergency is over, I will call for a constitutional convention for the purpose of repealing all amendments that have been illegally passed by that party since its seizure of extraconstitutional power. Thus we reclaim our heritage and rekindle the flame of liberty. That flame will be a torch that lights our way into a future of vast changes but infinite promise—"

Rivera stirred. Blood bubbled on her lips as she spoke. "Hey, Katy. . . . "

"Yes, Ada?" Katy brought her tear-streaked face close, to hear the weak voice.

"That future he's talking about. . . . You and Ben make it a good one, will you? Make it worth this." Rivera coughed, and blood gushed. She convulsed and then lay still.

After a time, Roark felt a hand grasp his shoulder. It was Chen, limping but alive. "Ben, look." A tall alien form, flanked by guards, was approaching through the floodlit night.

Roark got to his feet. "What's the word, Svyatog?"

"The Eaglemen have seized the American miltary and communications nerve centers as planned—this was why your President was able to broadcast his address. And, with the help of your people, we've killed or captured the Rogovon who attempted to break out of their tower. But . . . "

"But what?"

"Remember the Rogovon shuttle that departed before the attack? We now know that Valtu'Trovon was aboard. And we know where it went. Havelock and his men massacred the Central Committee—"

"What?"

"—leaving Kinsella and Drummond as the only survivors. We know this because they just contacted us. They watched the Rogovon shuttle arrive, make contact with Havelock . . . and kill him, departing afterwards."

Too much was happening. Roark shook his head sluggishly. "Svyatog . . . what the hell's going on?"  

"Kinsella and Drummond asked me the same question. I don't know—at least not in detail. But this much is clear: we can no longer rely on the intelligence we obtained by intercepting Havelock's conversations with Valtu. Actually, we never could. It's clear that the Rogovon have their own plan, which they found necessary to conceal from Havelock . . . presumably because it would have been unacceptable even to him And now they've eliminated him, indicating that he is no longer useful to them—which suggests in turn that the plan is about to go into effect."

"But now that the human attack on the Enclave has laid an egg, they won't have the `political climate' you've always said they needed. Won't that make them call it off?"

"Indications are otherwise. If anything, events may have stampeded them into throwing caution to the winds and proceeding with their plan, trusting on sheer audacity."

"What is this . . . plan?" Even as he asked the question, Roark knew perfectly well that Svyatog couldn't answer it. But he needed to ask it anyway, to make a human sound against a night that had suddenly gotten colder and darker.

"Unknown. We're trying to find out by interrogating the Rogovon prisoners. But they're only underlings. And besides, there isn't time. Valtu's shuttle has departed, to rendezvous with a Rogovon strike cruiser."

"With a . . . what?"

Svyatog hesitated. "It's a warship. Very formidable even by our standards. By your standards, it . . . well, it could . . . " The translator mercilessly tracked Svyatog's voice as it trailed off into a miserable silence. The Lokaron straightened with an obvious effort. "At any rate, I have no more time. The Harathon cruiser Boranthyr is in low orbit, and it represents our only hope for countering the Rogovon. I am leaving now to join it." The alien eyes held Roark's. "You have done your part. But now I must do mine. Your world is in greater danger than you can comprehend. Farewell." Svyatog turned abruptly and strode off in the direction of the Harathon landing field.

Katy lowered that which had been Ada Rivera to the ground and stood up. The tear tracks on her cheeks were dry, and her voice was steady. "I'm going."

"Huh?" At first, Roark didn't understand. The his eyes widened. "You mean go with Svyatog? Katy, we're talking about a battle straight out of space opera! Let the Lokaron handle it. What could you do except get in the way?"

"I'm going," she repeated, with nothing in her voice to suggest that his words had even raised a ripple in her consciousness. She gave the body at her feet a last look. "I have to. I hope you'll come too, Ben. But whether you do or not, I'm going." Then, all at once, she was off at a dead run, following Svyatog's retreating form.

Roark watched her go, and his mind leaped back to another night of fire and blood, when he'd seen her for what he'd believed to be the last time.

Never again! he thought desperately. And he bounded after her, with Chen's plaintive yell receding behind him.

He'd almost caught up to Katy when they rounded the corner of a shed and saw the lean shape of Svyatog's shuttle ahead, brightly lit and humming with the noise of rising energies. Svyatog was boarding, silhouetted against a rectangle of light that was a hatch.

"Svyatog!" screamed Katy with the last of her wind, against the whine of alien machinery.

It was hard to tell, but for an instant it seemed as though Svyatog might have heard her. But then the hatch slid shut, and he was gone.

Katy staggered to a dejected, gasping halt. Roark grasped her shoulders and held her as the noise rose in pitch and the shuttle's landing jacks began to lift slowly from the concrete, actuated by its drive.

Then the hatch was open again, and a figure they could recognize despite its alienness stood against the interior light, beckoning urgently.

Without pausing for thought, they sprinted for the hatch, Katy a couple of feet in the lead.

At the last moment, with Katy reaching frantically for the outstretched Lokaron hands, Roark thought they were too late after all. But then, Svyatog and his underlings grasped her forearms and lifted her up and into the hatch, more easily than they ought to have done. Roark forced an ultimate effort out of his bursting lungs and agonized leg muscles, and covered the remaining distance just as the shuttle rose too high for the Lokaron to get a decent grip. Yeah, too late . . .  

With a sensation that could be most nearly compared to static electricity, a force that negated weight took hold of him as he passed the barriers of an invisible field that surrounded the rising shuttle. His final, desperate leap sent him high enough to grasp a slender Lokaron hand. At that instant the shuttle began to accelerate, and he was almost snatched away into the wind. But Katy added her grip to the Lokaron's, and together they hauled him through the hatch just before automatic safety overrides slammed it shut.

The shuttle screamed off toward the cold stars.

 

 

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