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CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

_Hogg put his hand on Daniel's shoulder, pointed to the
ravine ahead of them, and said, "Not a bad place to take a break, master."

Daniel glanced toward the back of the line where Sun, as senior petty officer, should be marching to chivy in stragglers. He was there, all right, but little Vesey was guiding him along. Barnes walked alongside, carrying Sun's pack as well as his own.

Which Hogg had already noticed. "Unit, fall out in the ravine!" Daniel ordered. "Ten minute break! Captain out."

The spacers were tired, but they broke into a jog and grinned as they passed Daniel and Hogg. Dasi took Sun's left arm and helped Vesey move the gunner's mate into a trot also. Sun's legs moved when prodded, but his eyes had no life in them.

"We're going to be carrying him by the end of the day," Hogg murmured. "Fuck me if we're not."

Daniel looked at his rotund servant. "Yes," he said. "Maybe we'd better look for suitable poles here, just in case. We can use the ground cloth for a bed."

He followed Hogg down the bank, which sloped because wind had recently undercut the lip and dumped it as a scree of pebbles and adobe clay onto the base of the ravine. Midway he paused to survey the bank to either side, then went the rest of the way down. The crew had already chopped a small clearing in the brush so that they didn't have to hunch under arched branches.

Sentino sloshed water from the last of their three jerricans into a cup. The osmotic pump they'd set in the underground aquifer overnight had made up the seven or eight gallons they'd drunk from the original supply, but by mid-afternoon of this second day the spacers marching in dry air had absorbed ten gallons.

Sentino held the cup out to Daniel. "Here you go, sir," she said. "You get the cherry."

Rather than argue that he'd wait his turn—and besides, he was thirsty—Daniel took the cup and had it almost to his lips when the smell hit him. If he'd been out in the wind, he might have swallowed down most of the cup unawares, which would have been a great deal worse than going thirsty.

"Stop!" he said. "The water's contaminated. We'll have to discard the container, I'm afraid, because we don't have a means of cleaning it here."

Sun pushed Sentino aside and put his nose to the jerrican's wide mouth. He rose with a look of white rage. "God damn Pettin's shit-eating chicken-fucking whoreson excuses for spacers!" he shouted. His near stupor of moments before had passed. "And God damn me for accepting the cans without checking them!"

He picked up the jerrican by one of the paired handles on top and slung it a good twenty feet into the bushes. That was a remarkable throw for five gallons of water with the weight of the container.

"We got the jerricans from the Winckelmann, sir," Barnes explained softly. He and Dasi looked as miserable as Sun was angry. "The Sissie didn't have anything suitable, but the cruiser's outfitted for ground operations so we figured . . ."

"Traded them a bottle of brandy," Dasi said. Stolen from Delos Vaughn's baggage, no doubt. "It wasn't Mr. Sun's fault, sir, it was me and Barnes did it. And we didn't check the cans."

One of which had been used for some petroleum product, probably extra kerosine for the fuel cells of the Winckelmann's big aircar; and hadn't been properly cleaned afterwards. Nobody on the Princess Cecile had noticed the smell before filling the container with water. They'd been in a hurry, of course.

"I think we can blame Commodore Pettin for the difficulty," Daniel said mildly. "Though such a trivial business doesn't seem worthy of an officer of the commodore's demonstrated ability. Vesey, take two men and get the pump working."

"Sir, the flow back where we camped was only a gallon an hour," the midshipman said. "And that was in the rivercourse proper."

"Yes," Daniel said, "but I'm hopeful that we can find a more bountiful source in the meantime. Hogg, what do you think of the block of limestone right over . . ."

As Daniel spoke, he pushed his way along the edge of the ravine, to the right of the collapsed bank. For the first twenty feet it was merely a matter of muscling through twigs as dry as old bones. Just this side of the sandstone inclusion he'd seen as he entered the ravine grew a plant the size and shape of a wicker hassock. Its body consisted of strands curving up from the base to a central stem. A few had released their upper attachment and lay like whips on the ground.

"Ah," said Daniel. "Bring me one of the empty jerricans soonest."

The one filled with contaminated water would be even better, but Daniel didn't blame Sun for letting out his anger. Besides, the thing was done.

Dasi tossed an empty plastic container to Hogg, who passed it in turn to Daniel. "Everybody get down," Daniel said.

He squatted, judged the distance, and threw himself flat as he lobbed the jerrican. It landed in the center of the plant. There was a whap-pap-pap as all the remaining strands released simultaneously. The seeds at the ends of each, glass-hard and the size of marbles, flew forty feet in all directions. The can spun into the air, then dropped onto the ruins of the plant.

"A much better idea than bumping into it," Daniel said; preening himself on his observation, but doing it in so quiet a voice that not even Hogg could have heard him. He stepped past the plant to the rock plug.

"I think it's another burrow," Daniel said to his servant. "And I think there must be water inside, don't you? The creatures dig, and it wouldn't be any great trick to trench down into the aquifer so they could lap it up at need."

"Speaking of things I never needed to see again," Hogg muttered. Over his shoulder he called, "Get the shovels up here. The master and me are going after water."

Jeshonyk, a power room technician, brought the shovels. He stepped gingerly over the discharged bush, carefully avoiding putting his foot on any of the now-flaccid strands.

Daniel had seen Jeshonyk tighten a fitting under the Tokamak, working in the full knowledge that a slip wouldn't leave his mates so much as a pinch of ash to bury. He'd been wholly unconcerned by that risk, but the notion of a plant that shot bullets bothered him. It's all a matter of what you're used to. . . . 

Hogg handed Jeshonyk the impeller in exchange for shovels, then got to work with Daniel from opposite sides of the plug. Daniel could've passed the job off to one of the crewmen, but he probably had more experience with shovels than any of them did. It brought back memories of his boyhood, digging out Black-Scaled Rooters with Hogg.

You could lose your foot at the ankle from a rooter's teeth if you weren't quick. Daniel remembered that too.

He hit rock; he moved out a hand's breadth and put the blade in again, using all the strength of his upper body. This time it sank halfway and he stamped it fully in with the heel of his right boot.

He exchanged glances with Hogg, then both levered their shovels to the right and left in unison. A slab of dense clay fell away, baring a foot of the plug. It tapered to both ends and was wedged with smaller stones from within the burrow.

"I'll pull out the rock," Daniel said, thrusting the shovel into the ground beside him where it would be out of the way. "You be ready if anything decides to come out with it."

Hogg's lips pursed in consideration. "Right," he said. "Jeshonyk, I believe I'll take the gun back."

Daniel took the plug in both hands and wriggled it. The block weighed well over a hundred pounds, but nothing beyond its mass bound it into place from this side now that they'd dug the bank away.

Daniel drew back, gasping with controlled effort. Rotating his body he half lifted, half flung the plug into the brush behind him. As smoothly as if the same cam controlled him and his master, Hogg thrust the muzzle of the impeller into the hole—not to shoot, at least not instantly, but to physically prevent anything that tried to leap out.

Nothing did. The opening was lined with rock slabs. They weren't mortared into place, but they certainly weren't a natural occurrence. Distinct patches of light showed in the interior.

"Sir," said Sentino. She'd drawn her knife; with her left hand she unlatched her equipment belt and let it curl to the ground beside her. "I'll fit."

Daniel frowned. "Yes, all right," he said. He locked his visor down so that he could look into the burrow under light enhancement. "Barnes, Dasi. As soon as Sentino is clear, you'll start prying these blocks out so that a larger person—"

He patted his belly deliberately.

"—can get through the opening. And Sun, I'll take the other impeller, please."

"Sir," said the gunner's mate. He handed Daniel the weapon.

When Daniel used that tone, nobody argued—even if they fancied their own marksmanship beyond what they thought their captain was up to. Daniel had more real out-in-the-woods experience than any of the spacers, and he trusted himself not to shoot more than he did Sun or even Hogg.

He grinned at Sentino. "Go ahead," he said. "And Jeshonyk, you're probably the next thinnest. Take your gear off and get ready to pull Sentino back by the ankles if she gets stuck."

"Stuck!" Sentino sneered. She squirmed into the opening with as little difficulty as the creature from the night before had shown when it escaped. In truth, there wasn't much difference in weight, and the spacer had more of hers in her legs and arms.

Her boots disappeared down the tunnel. Barnes and Dasi lunged into their work, chopping the shovel blades into the bank and ripping away the dirt. They were used to working together. Even though this task wasn't a familiar one, they didn't get in each other's way.

One slab sagged, then the whole construct collapsed on itself. Barnes thrust his shovel in high, then lowered it and dragged out several feet of rock and dirt with the back edge.

Hogg looked at Daniel and raised an eyebrow in approval. They'd both dug enough holes to appreciate how much strength Barnes's action had required. Dasi leaned forward and cleaned much of the remainder.

"Unit, I'm through," Sentino called over the intercom. "Holy God, it's a real cavern in here! It opens up just a couple yards in and it's huge!"

"I'm next," Sun said, stripping off his belt and flexing his shoulders. He grinned apologetically at Daniel. "Get some command authority in there."

Anger and a direct need for him had brought the gunner's mate back from a funk that seemed even more unreal now that it was past. Sun simply wasn't a man you could imagine that happening to.

"Right," said Daniel. "Take a shovel with you. I don't know how far I trust this tunnel now that we've widened it—"

He moved aside. Barnes and Dasi stepped back together with their shovel heads locked, making a final sweep of the debris.

"—and I want us to be able to grub it out from both sides if there's a cave-in."

Sun put his knife in his teeth and took the shovel from Barnes. He thrust it ahead of him as he followed Sentino.

"Barnes," Daniel said, nodding to the man. Anything Barnes's shoulders cleared would probably pass Hogg's belly, so it was a good test. "Miquelon, Jeshonyk, Dasi, Hogg, and me. Hogg, you take your impeller."

Nobody protested at the order of entry, not that a protest was going to change anything. There was a risk to splitting his small force, but Daniel was unwilling to let one or two of his personnel scout a burrow system that held scores or possibly hundreds of the creatures who'd dug it. A team of eight with an impeller could support itself.

"Vesey, you and your section will watch our gear and the entrance from outside," Daniel continued. Barnes had grunted his way into the tunnel and Miquelon was ready to follow; she held her equipment belt ahead of her rather than dropping it on the ground as the others had. "You'll have a shovel and the other impeller. Don't get frozen on the hole. There have to be other entrances, and we don't need whoever's inside—"

He'd meant to say "whatever," not "whoever."

"—to swarm around us from behind, all right? Over."

Vesey and Matahurd stood in sight at the corner of a bush whose tasseled crown fluttered occasionally like a stand of ultramarine flags. The midshipman trotted forward to take the weapon and shovel, speaking briskly. Daniel couldn't hear the words, so she was addressing the members of her section alone over the intercom.

Daniel nodded mentally, though his head didn't really move. She had the makings of a good officer.

"I don't expect you'll have any trouble," Daniel said as he gave Vesey the impeller. "But if I were sure of that, I wouldn't leave a guard to begin with."

Hogg, wheezing like a rooting sow, thrust himself into the burrow. Daniel waited a comfortable five seconds and followed. It was tight, but never so constricting that he wondered if he was going to be caught. At the far end of a tunnel no longer than the six feet Sentino had estimated was—

Well, was a paradise of pastel light and plants which swooped toward the twenty-foot ceiling like constructions of cast plastic. The spacers wandered among them in amazement. The air was noticeably more humid than that in the ravine outside.

"Don't get out of sight of one another!" Daniel said. Besides humidity, the air was perfumed. Gnatlike insects drifted through the mist of light, and—

"Where's the light coming from?" Daniel called, lifting his visor out of the way. He didn't need its enhancement nor protection from windblown grit. "Hogg, can you tell?"

"Sir, I think it's just blocks of quartz built into the ceiling for light guides," Jeshonyk said, pointing his arm as Daniel joined him under one of the bright patches. It was a good eight feet in diameter, made of quartz wedged into place with other bits of stone. The contruction was similar to that of the entranceway lining.

"Naw, it can't be," Dasi said, prodding one of the gorgeous plants with the point of his knife. "We'd have seen it from up above. Look, you can see a whole line of them down this tunnel. No way we could've missed all of that."

Daniel squinted. There were at least . . . ten bright patches in the ceiling, with more merging into the distance beyond just as Dasi said. The separation between pairs was about thirty feet, making Daniel's estimate of possibly hundreds of creatures in the burrow now seem absurdly low. Besides this central aisle of plantings, narrow passages led off to either side.

Daniel considered the pattern of light and shadow above him. The quartz blocks weren't uniformly translucent, and the faces refracted light so that the composite lens looked as though a giant spiderweb lay across it. Even so, Daniel could see that the western edge was brighter than the east.

"I believe Jeshonyk's right when he says light guides," Daniel said. "Given the depth of the floor here beneath the bottom of the ravine, there's about six feet of roof. If the inlets slant outward, they'll catch some light whenever the sun's up—but there won't be any huge mass of quartz on the surface like there is down here at the outlet."

"What kinda animal does that?" a spacer asked. Nobody replied, perhaps because the answer was too obvious when you thought about it.

Sun dug the shovel into the cavern wall, then withdrew it with a puzzled expression. Only a trickle of dirt followed the blade. "Hey, Captain?" he said. "There's plastic on the walls or something."

Daniel walked over to the petty officer, rounding a plant set into the floor in a stone-lined tub. All the cavern's vegetation was soft-bodied though it was more the size of trees than ordinary plants. The genera were unfamiliar to Daniel; certainly they weren't native to Sexburga's arid surface today.

"I know what it is," offered Dasi, holding up his left index finger. On it gleamed a drop of clear sap from the wound he'd pricked in the plant he was examining. "Hell, they gotta cover the walls with something or it'd all fall in, right?"

"How's chances we find some water and get the hell outa here?" Hogg muttered. He held the impeller across his chest, ready to spin in any direction and throw the weapon to his shoulder. He was perfectly poised, but he was also as uncomfortable as Daniel had ever seen him.

Daniel touched the wall with his bare hand. As Sun had said, there was a clear, slightly resilient, coating over the gritty clay. It felt warm to the touch.

"Yes, we'll do that," Daniel said, but his mind was more on the wonder of this place than it was on Hogg's question or the more general business of reaching the beacon to summon help. They wouldn't delay here—they had their duty, after all—but by heaven! what a report Commodore Pettin and the civilized universe would get. "This was perhaps the most scientifically useful piece of make-work and treachery that I've ever heard of."

"Hey, look!" Sentino cried. She darted into the passage.

Daniel heard a spreek! that might have been Sentino but probably wasn't. He stabbed his knife into the sidewall to free his hands and ducked to follow the crewman down the passage. He wasn't sure even Sentino would clear the low ceiling if she stood upright.

He supposed she was still carrying her knife in her hand. She almost had to be, since she'd left the sheath with the rest of her belt gear. Grabbing a creature with teeth like the one last night bare-handed was dangerous, but Daniel would just as soon Sentino not stab—

"I got—" she called. There was a tearing-paper sound. Sentino staggered back into Daniel's arms; the knife slipped from her flaccid right hand. Dropping the remains of a fist-sized puffball on the passage floor, the creature she'd grabbed with her left squirmed away. It began to dig furiously in the sidewall with spadelike forepaws.

There was a dry smell in the air, dizzying though not unpleasant. Daniel slapped his visor down with his left hand and felt the filters clamp his nostrils.

The hairless creature looked sideways at him through the spraying dirt and gave a wail of despair. Daniel grabbed Sentino under the arms and backed, pulling her with him. She was a dead weight, but he could feel her heart beating strongly through her coveralls.

Something came around the bend just beyond where the creature was digging into the sidewall. It completely filled the passage, brushing cascades of soil down where its shoulders rubbed. Daniel couldn't get a good look at it since his own body blocked most of the light coming from the main gallery, but he could tell that it was black and bigger than he was.

The smaller creature went "Wheek! Wheek! Wheek!" and vanished, apparently dropping into an adjacent passage. The newcomer paused, its eyes focused on Daniel and Sentino. Its four canines projected forward to crisscross like paired ice-tongs, perfect tools to take living prey. It hunched like a cat preparing to spring.

Daniel stepped over his crewman's body. "Unit, get Sentino out of here!" he shouted. "Somebody drag her—"

The predator flowed toward him like a snake striking. It pushed off with its spatulate forepaws but folded them back against its sides in the course of the motion.

Daniel caught it by the neck, shoulder-broad and covered with a ruff of bristles. The fangs clashed just in front of his visor. The impact was like that of a charging bull. Daniel had braced himself, but it threw him back anyway.

His right boot tramped something soft—Sentino's outflung hand, but he lifted his foot and felt her snatched back with no more ceremony than a case of rations would get. That was fine: dinner was just what she'd be if they didn't get her back quickly.

Daniel couldn't hold the creature, didn't want to hold it, but if he didn't continue fighting it would push him over backward. Then the only question was whether it'd tear his throat out or start by devouring his belly.

"Watch this bastard!" he wheezed. "I don't know how big . . ."

His toes skidded slowly backward down the passage. He felt his left knee start to buckle. He twisted that foot sideways in a desperate attempt to get more traction.

The jaws closed again. This time the tip of one lower fang hit Daniel's visor and slammed his helmet against the passage roof. Despite the shock-absorbant liner, Daniel's consciousness shattered into white light. As he felt himself going over, he kicked out blindly with both feet.

The predator made its first sound, a whuff of surprise as Daniel's bootheels hammered its muzzle. It flowed forward again.

Hogg, leaning over his master, socketed the impeller in the predator's right eye and squeezed the trigger. The whack! of the weapon's circuitry merged with the CRASH! of dense bone disintegrating at the impact of the hypersonic pellet.

The creature lurched into the central gallery and sprawled, its paddlelike hind legs covering Daniel's torso. Its body struck Hogg and sent him spinning away, though he still kept hold of the impeller. Sun drove the shovel into the creature's neck; it skidded off, gouging the floor and narrowly missing Daniel's hand. Other spacers were hacking with their knives.

"Get back!" Daniel shouted. "It's dead! Back away before you hurt somebody!"

He clutched his hands in to his chest, reminded by the comment that "somebody" might very well be him. The creature's head and feet twisted upward in a convulsion; Daniel used the respite to snatch his body clear of a weight that he hadn't been able to shift with his own strength.

He got shakily to his feet. Barnes put an arm around him and lifted him several steps back to where the creature's spastic movements couldn't knock him down again. Its limbs were modified for digging, but claws that cut through rocky clay would be just as destructive if they met human bone and muscle.

The creature flopped over on its spine and finished dying. Hogg's pellet had lifted the back off its skull, but the face wasn't seriously damaged save that one eyesocket was empty.

It weighed half a ton. It was as ugly as anything Daniel had ever seen. The foul breath that had blown from its mouth as it attacked now hung over the body like a miasma.

Apart from the crossed fangs, however, the face was undeniably human.

The Princess Cecile's utility aircar was little more than a frame linking a quartet of fan nacelles to the open-topped cabin where Adele, Tovera, and two spacers sat on benches of metal webbing. Adele shifted. The seats weren't as uncomfortable as they looked, but they looked very uncomfortable.

Tavastierna landed with only a moderate bang and bounce. That was a creditable performance given the car's heavy load, but Adele scowled anyway. She knew it wasn't fair to expect professional competence from a rigger who hadn't driven an aircar in months, but "fair" didn't have much to do with the present situation. The operation had very little margin for error.

"Shut off the motors!" she said, shouting to be heard over the whine of the fans spinning at zero angle of attack. Tavastierna looked surprised since their helmet intercoms would easily damp that level of external noise, but he obeyed without question.

"I've cut off helmet communications from now until we execute the entry," Adele said as the blades wound down octave by octave. "They could be overheard. I doubt whether the Captal's staff is that alert, but I don't choose to take a chance with the lives of our shipmates."

And our own, come to think of it, though that isn't the first priority for me at the moment, she added internally.

Tavastierna had landed behind a ridge whose front side was a little over a thousand yards from the knoll on which the Captal da Lund had built his fortress. Even Adele could have climbed the slope on this side; Dorst and Tavastierna wouldn't raise a sweat. The weight of the guns the men carried—Dorst a stocked impeller, Tavastierna a submachine gun for the team's own protection—wasn't a significant factor either.

"Dorst, are you still comfortable with this?" Adele said. "Tovera can take over now if you have any concerns. Being unwilling to kill another human being is nothing to be ashamed of."

"No, ma'am," the midshipman agreed. "But you don't need to worry. I've trained for this."

When Adele checked the crew list for a sniper, she'd learned to her surprise that Dorst had been on the Academy marksmanship team and had won trophies in long-range competition. He'd assured her that his training involved hostage simulations rather than merely bull's-eye targets. He'd never done it for real—killed—but Adele well knew the effectiveness of training like what Dorst described.

A six-wheeled delivery van was trundling down the road from Spires; it would reach them in a few minutes. Adele and Tovera would join the spacers in the cargo box during the time the vehicle was out of sight of the Captal's residence, unless she decided to leave this job to Tovera after all.

Adele's servant looked at her and smiled. "He'll be all right, mistress," Tovera said. "If anything goes wrong, you or me can fix it then."

"Nothing's going to go wrong," Dorst said stolidly.

"No, I don't suppose it is," Adele said. She tried to smile. It doubtless looked forced, but her natural expression at times like these was something that only a sociopath like Tovera could find humor in. "Dorst, Tavastierna—you'd better get into position. Captain Leary is counting on you."

The spacers nodded and started up the slope at an amazingly fast pace. They moved like a rigger and a healthy young athlete, not a librarian with a tendency to trip over her own feet, of course.

It was odd what you remembered. The most vivid recollection Adele had of the duel she'd fought when she was sixteen wasn't the face of the boy when her bullet hit: it was instead the pink mist in the air behind him, a mush of blood and fresh brains. The simulators she'd used for hours in her parents' townhouse hadn't prepared her for that.

The van's suspension squealed and rattled as it approached. They—the Republic of Cinnabar, paying with funds which Mistress Sand had put at Adele's disposal—were renting the vehicle for a sum not much short of what it had cost new. Just in case, though, the vehicle's Sexburgan owner and its regular driver were aboard the Princess Cecile with all they wanted to drink. Half a dozen spacers were sitting with them to make sure that they didn't decide to leave and maybe call the Captal.

Tovera shifted her body, working muscle groups with a minimum of movement. She was perfectly cool, but after all she had no more emotion than the submachine gun in her hands. She looked at Adele and said, "I wouldn't be any better at long range than you would, mistress. Though I suppose either of us could manage if the need arose."

"I suppose," Adele agreed coldly. Why should it bother her that Tovera considered her mistress and herself merely a pair of killers at this moment? It was true, after all.

Unlike Adele, Tovera had no conscience. But that wouldn't make any difference. It never had before.

The van pulled up beside the aircar. Koop was driving, wearing a Sexburgan caftan and a soft cap. The rest of the team were in RCN utilities, comfortable and unobtrusively colored. If this event went wrong, there was no chance of hiding who was responsible for it, no matter what they wore.

Well, Adele didn't intend that it go wrong.

Woetjans lifted the roller gate and jerked Adele into the cargo box. Bemish offered Tovera a hand, but she'd already hopped aboard with her usual economy. Tovera didn't look graceful, but she moved without error. It was rather like watching a door open and close. The motion was without art, but it was always the same and always flawless.

"Go!" Woetjans shouted, and the van accelerated from its rolling stop. There were five spacers in the back; Koop drove with a submachine gun under a towel on the seat beside him. More personnel would have crowded the vehicle and wouldn't, in the opinion of Woetjans and Mon, have contributed to the success of the operation.

There were twenty-one people in the Captal's compound; the number hadn't changed since Dorotige had returned from South Land. They were on alert, but that was different from really being alert. The van delivered food to the compound on a regular schedule. The guards would search the vehicle, but they wouldn't be surprised to see it arriving.

Adele smiled faintly. The surprise would come shortly after that arrival.

Adele looked at the faces around her, lighted through the opera window in one of the door's upper slats. "Is everyone ready for this?" she asked, more because the spacers seemed to expect something from her than out of real concern for the answer.
"Ain't we just!" said Liebig, hugging his submachine gun to his chest. The others' guttural sounds of approval blended well with the groans of the van's suspension.

Adele put her visor down momentarily to check the distance to the Captal's front gate. She still wasn't comfortable with getting information from the helmet display; it made her resentful and more than a little angry not to be able to be able to use her personal data unit in normal fashion.

Normally she wouldn't be bouncing around in the back of a delivery van. Besides, the helmet display worked perfectly well as it read down the distance in yards: 831, 830, 829—a lurch as the vehicle rounded a switchback and its transmission shifted to a lower gear—827 . . .

Moronick began to sing under his breath: "When I'm home you call me sugar honey, but when I'm gone . . ." His thumb covered and uncovered the receiver switch that controlled his impeller's power. It was in the off, safe, position. He didn't turn it on, but the touch of the plastic fascinated him.

" . . . you run around and play."

Adele was the only one of those present who didn't carry a shoulder weapon, either a submachine gun or a semiautomatic impeller throwing heavy slugs. There was a small pistol in her left side pocket. It was the weapon she knew, the weapon she pointed as if her eye and not her hand controlled it.

It would do. It had done many times in the past.

The van slowed gradually, then slewed shrieking to the right as a brake grabbed. 14, 13, 11 . . . Koop corrected with his steering wheel and brought them to a juddering halt.

Adele could hear the wind now, blowing the last of the grit kicked up by the truck's wheels against the metal body. "Hey, where's Mariakakis?" an unfamiliar voice called.

"Mariakakis tells the boss he wants a raise," Koop said. The cab door opened, then slammed. "Boss tells Mariakakis fuck your raise, you're not worth what I pay you now. Mariakakis says fuck your job, then. And me, I get promoted when I just started work."

Adele blinked. Her impression of Koop was that he was rather more dense than the run of spacers. She'd told him to say, "Mariakakis is sick today," if asked. Koop's embellishment was wholly convincing, even though she knew it was nonsense.

"Yeah, well, get the back open and let's take a look," the gateman said, his voice moving along the side of the van as boots crunched on the road metal. Everyone in the cargo compartment squatted. Woetjans handed her impeller to Bemish and drew an arm's-length piece of high-pressure tubing from beneath her belt.

"Dorotige's got a wild hair up his ass and not letting us into town when we're off duty," the gateman continued. "There better be extra booze in this—"

The door rattled at Koop's touch, then shot upward as fast as Liebig and Gansevoort could raise it from the inside.

"—shipment—hey!!"

The gateman was a lanky fellow whose ginger whiskers tried to cover serious acne scars. Woetjans grabbed his throat with her left hand.

WHACK! sounded from the top of the stone guard tower.

Woetjans rang the tubing off the gateman's skull, knocking off his mauve beret and putting a welt across his forehead. He went limp in her grip. Adele grabbed the keypad chained to his belt and punched in 5154, the code that raised the gate today. She could have entered the compound's security system through its communications link, but this was faster and simpler.

The body of the guard who'd watched from the tower's walkway fell flat on the ground beside the vehicle. There was a hole precisely between her staring eyes; apart from that she looked perfectly normal. From the amount of matter oozing through the fan of her hair, the slug had removed the back of her skull like the top of a soft-boiled egg.

The gate's two leaves cammed open; the row of spikes beyond began to sink into concrete sheaths. Koop scrambled back into the cab, pausing to snatch up the hat he'd lost in the flurry of activity.

The door at the foot of the guard tower was open. Adele and Gansevoort jumped out of the cargo compartment as Woetjans slung the unconscious gateman behind her rather than leave him on the ground. The sprawled corpse couldn't be seen through the open gate.

"Go!" Adele said, but it was only her adrenaline-speeded senses that made it seem that Koop was delaying. The van jerked into motion, making those in the cargo compartment sway forward and back. Under cover of the vehicle, Adele and the spacer with her darted into the tower.

The van's back door was still open. Woetjans had retrieved her impeller from Liebig. The bosun's face had a detached expression, as though she were deciding who to assign to a mildly onerous duty.

Stairs led up from the anteroom of the guard tower. Through the other door was an office with a couch and refrigerator besides the control station. Adele sat at the control station while Gansevoort took the stairs two at a time, heading for the automatic impeller on top of the tower. He was Sun's striker, working toward a rating of gunner's mate.

The display was swirling pearly light. Adele brought up the main screen. A dozen keystrokes took her through the interlocks to first enter the security system, then to take complete control of all the compound's electronics. She displayed the courtyard imagery in a corner so that as she worked she could see the van driving past the barracks to the separated power room.

The power room door stood open, so she didn't have to bother unlocking it. Woetjans had a crate of explosives in the van against the possibility that the door would be closed with a manual bolt, but Adele was glad they could avoid noise for the moment.

Her control station had a touchplate. Adele's finger's danced across it, moving with precision if not what she would call verve. First she shut down communications to the other two guard towers, then switched their power off as well. The automatic impellers could still be fired, but without power traverse the guards would have to horse the weapons around manually to aim toward the courtyard. That would take minutes that they most certainly would not be allowed.

The van stopped in front of the power room. Woetjans led the four spacers with her into the squat building. The van, with Tovera now in the cab with Koop, made a U-turn and drove toward the Captal's residence.

Woetjans looked out of the power room and waved her free hand. "Ready, Gansevoort?" Adele called over the intercom.

"Ready!" Gansevoort answered, so loudly that his voice echoed down the stairwell. The building vibrated as his impeller turned inward.

Adele keyed the fire alarms for the barracks and the residence building. An electronic wail filled the compound.

Nothing happened for a moment. Adele disconnected the power to both buildings. A moment later a servant wearing puffed red-and-yellow garments ran from the residence and three half-dressed guards from the barracks. They looked around in a mixture of anger and confusion.

"Stay in the open!" Adele boomed over the public-address system. She turned off the siren. Woetjans and three of her team walked toward the barracks, their weapons aimed. "No one will be har—"

The house servant turned. His arms flailed and he sprawled across the threshold at the feet of two more liveried servants.

Tovera got out of the van, pointing her submachine gun one-handed in what might have looked a negligent fashion to anyone who hadn't just seen her shoot. She beckoned the two surviving servants toward her with her free hand. One remained transfixed; the other knelt, clasped his hands, and lowered his head in prayer.

"No one will be harmed if you cooperate!" Adele said. Her amplified voice rumbled through the open doorways, cold and hectoring. The guards who were already in the open didn't try to run in the face of the spacers' guns, but no more came from the barracks.

Adele's brain warned her of movement. Instinct slid the pistol from her pocket, but the threat showed on her panoramic display rather than in the room with her.

"Northeast tower!" she shouted. "He's—"

The tower guard braced himself on the catwalk rail, holding his pistol in both hands, and fired across the courtyard. Dust flew from the facade of the residence.

Tovera turned like mercury flowing. Even before she could fire, the top of the northeast tower erupted into dust, chunks of stone, and streaks of vivid color where osmium slugs struck the turret's metal fittings. Adele's control station vibrated with the violence of Gansevoort's long burst above her.

Gansevoort stopped firing. Woetjans' team and the guards in front of the barracks had thrown themselves on the ground. Bits continued to drop off the crumbled tower: the slugs had chewed away the west face of the railing and turret. The wind drifted dust from the compound like torn russet gauze. The only visible portion of the guard was his right arm lying among the debris in the courtyard, severed at the elbow by fifty grains of osmium moving at Mach 8.

"Everyone in the barracks," Adele said, "come out unarmed, now! In thirty seconds we'll begin raking the building until it falls in and crushes everyone who hasn't been killed by the projectiles."

Another man came from the barracks, doubled over as if he were walking into a storm. Liebig taped his arms behind him. Two more guards crept out, their hands high. A woman came from the south tower, stumbling in her haste.

Woetjans cupped her hands and shouted in the direction of the gate. Adele grimaced and switched the helmet intercoms live again. "Unit, your helmets work now," she said. "Signals out."

"Signals, that's everybody from here," Woetjans voice said in synchrony with her lips on the other side of the courtyard. "There's six servants and a guard in the residence with the boss, they say. Team One over."

"Team One, all right," Adele said, rising to her feet. "Leave a guard on the captives and join me at the residence. Ah, out."

She'd never get used to RCN communications protocols. Of course, communications had never interested her very much. Knowledge for its own sake had been her focus.

She was smiling as she walked from the gate tower toward the residence building. A great deal had changed since she met Lt. Daniel Leary.

For the most part the spacers were exhilarated from the operation's present success. Bemish was babbling that by God we're showing these wogs how it's done, but Adele didn't let her distaste for the vulgar chauvinism touch the surface of her mind.

Koop alone looked reserved. That was perhaps his normal reaction to things going well, but equally it might have had something to do with the bloodstains on his uniform where he'd knelt while securing the two living servants.

Tovera switched the ammunition tube under her weapon's barrel for a fully loaded one from the pouch on her left side. Her eyes darted in all directions, and her smile was as thin and cold as a streak of hoarfrost.

"Three servants are in the kitchen, hiding behind the central counter," Adele said. "They may as well stay there for now."

She shook her head at the silliness of anyone thinking they could hide in a building with a surveillance system as complete as the Captal's. Even his private suite was covered, though he probably believed he'd switched the cameras off when he realized that the compound was under attack.

"The owner is in his bedroom on the second floor," Adele continued. "One guard is in the main room of the suite with a gun trained on the door. That has a mechanical bar, so we'll have to blow it down."

"Right," Woetjans said. "That's you, Jiangsi."

The maintenance tech nodded. He was leaning against the doorjamb so that it supported some of the weight of his pack.

"Mistress?" Liebig asked. He'd looked hungrily at the Captal's big aircar when he trotted past it beside the bosun. "The guy inside isn't the one who flew the captain away, is he? Because if he is, he might know . . ."

"The driver, Dorotige, was the last one to come out of the barracks," Tovera said. Like Adele herself, she was using imagery from the compound's internal system to view their opponents.

The tip of Tovera's tongue touched her lips. "The man inside, preparing to die for his master, is named benYamani. There's no reason we shouldn't take him up on his offer."

"We'll give him another chance to surrender anyway," Adele said. She nodded to the open door. "Let's go."

In Adele's normal state of mind she would have been irritated by Tovera's enthusiasm for killing. At present—

She glanced down at the cratered back of the servant who'd tried to run. Blood was congealing in the holes where velocity had disintegrated the ten-grain pellets like tiny bombs when they struck.

If there is a God, may She forbid that I ever find this sort of business normal. 

Woetjans left a man in the doorway and another in the foyer, then led the way up the staircase. Adele had locked the kitchen door and shut off the elevator, so there was no need of a guard down here. They wouldn't need another man upstairs either, though, so she didn't comment on the bosun's arrangements.

An ornate metal door stood in the center of the second floor's semicircular anteroom. It was finished to look like bronze, but Adele knew from the contractor's specifications that it was actually tungsten over a core of lime.

"System," Adele said as they faced the door. She'd set the compound's intercom to be cued by her helmet. "Mister benYamani, unbolt the door and surrender. We won't harm you or your master. We've come here to get information, that's all."

There was no response. "Mistress?" Tovera said.

Adele grimaced. It was so unnecessary. "Yes, go ahead," she said.

"Officer Woetjans," Tovera said, holding out her submachine gun. "Let me trade weapons with you for a moment."

The bosun looked startled but handed over the stocked impeller when Adele nodded. Tovera, aiming by the image projected on her visor, pointed the weapon at the wall to the right of the armored door.

The whack! of the shot was startlingly loud in the enclosed space. The slug's driving band flashed as it ionized; it was a ghostly yellow glow remained in the air for several seconds. The wall was of thick structural plastic, intended to deaden sound but not to stop rounds from an impeller. Chips flew into the anteroom and a cavity the size of a soup dish spalled off the inside.

The slug continued straight and true. The waiting guard leaped up, rolled over a table, and fell prone across the hand-knotted carpet. His blood splashed a broad pattern around the hole the slug took through the wall of the Captal's bedroom.

Tovera gave the impeller back to Woetjans. "That should do," she said.

Adele squatted and took out her personal data unit; the helmet's inputs weren't sufficient for what she needed now. At a nod from the bosun, Jiangsi shrugged off his pack and began lifting out blocks of explosive with the blasting caps already in preformed sockets.

"Wait," said Adele, concentrating on her display. "We could do more damage than we intend with that."

"You want me to take down the wall instead of the door, mistress?" Jiangsi offered. "That won't be hard."

"Wait," Adele repeated.

She turned on the vision panel above the Captal's huge circular bed and routed to it the output of the security camera in the main room of suite; she focused the image closely on what was left of the guard's head. The slug must have been tumbling slightly when it came through the wall.

"Captal da Lund!" Adele said through the intercom. "We will let you and all your surviving personnel go free once you've answered our questions about what happened to Lieutenant Leary. Open the door to your suite. If we have to blow our way in, there's a possibility you'll be killed and a near certainty that you'll be badly injured."

"No `near' about that," Woetjans muttered. Her big scarred hand patted the length of tubing in her belt. She'd wrapped tape around one end for a better grip.

"You've got thirty seconds," Adele continued. "I'm going to begin counting down. Thirty, twenty-nine—"

The man cowering in the bedroom suddenly snatched open his door. "Wait!" he cried. "For the love of God, wait!"

Adele rose to her feet and put her data unit back in its pocket. She lifted her visor; she didn't need to watch further. The spacers tensed, but Tovera merely shook her head in disappointment.

The bar scraped on the other side of the door. When Woetjans heard it click free of the staples, she kicked the panel open with the heel of her boot. It bloodied the Captal's nose as it knocked him down.

Adele had never seen the exiled dictator in the flesh. He would have looked distinguished under most circumstances, but blubbering so that tears streaked the blood on his cheeks was not his best moment. Woetjans and Jiangsi thrust their guns in his face.

"Please, please, I'll pay you more money than you ever dreamed!" the Captal cried. "I'll make you rich for life, only don't kill me!"

It was funny in its way. "Tovera," Adele said. "How much money would it take for you not to kill this gentleman if I told you to do it?"

"If you allowed me to do it, you mean, mistress," Tovera said. They were playing a game, she and her mistress, but every word of it was true. She shrugged. "I don't need money, mistress."

Adele was unable to keep to keep from sneering when she looked down at the sniveling exile, but perhaps that was the right expression for the purpose anyway. "When you've told us how to find Lieutenant Leary," she said evenly, "we'll release you and your personnel."

"They're all right, they're perfectly safe," the Captal said. He'd pulled his knees up to his chest and his fingers covered his face, pressing to either side of his nose. Was it broken, or was it simply fear that had so unmanned him? "It was nothing to do with me, really, I was just helping Vaughn out of friendship for his father. Getting your captain out of the way so that no one would give the alarm until Vaughn was safely back on Strymon."

Woetjans tapped the Captal's left wrist with her impeller muzzle. The heat shield was still hot from the recently fired slug; the prisoner jerked his hand down with a cry of terror.

"Where?" Woetjans said. "Or I'll tie your dick to the aircar and fly back to town. So help me God."

"At Site Two on South Land!" the Captal cried. "Dorotige took them there, he can find them again. Besides, it's in the car's navigation system!"

Adele frowned. "Is that true?" she asked the bosun.

Woetjans shrugged. "Likely enough," she said. "Liebig'll know."

She switched to intercom. Her lips continued to move, but the helmet's dampers smothered the words. A moment later she nodded and said, "Yeah, that's right unless they cleared the system. Liebig's going to check the car right now."

"We weren't going to do Leary any harm," the Captal said. "Just keep him out of the way till your fleet had gone. He had plenty of food with him and there's water at the site. And then Dorotige would have flown him and his servants back."

The Captal had brought his right hand to his face again but seemed generally to have relaxed. A good sign, Adele supposed. The heat shield hadn't even raised a blister. From the way he'd jumped, one might have thought his hand was being singed off.

"Mistress?" Woetjans said. "Liebig says that's right, the navigation record's still intact. If he can use that car, likely he can drive back himself to get the captain."

"We'll use the car," Adele said. "We'll take this gentleman and Mr. Dorotige with us as guides, however. Just in case."

The Captal slowly lowered his hands and let his legs extend slightly. "And then you'll let me go?" he said, his voice husky with fear.

"Yes, we will," Adele said. "And if Daniel and all his crew, his servants as you called them, are all right, we'll even leave you food."

Woetjans grinned, though she still had a worried expression. "Let's get going," she said. "I don't see any way in hell we're going to get the captain back before time the squadron's supposed to lift, but maybe the Winckelmann'll lose all her thrusters when she lights 'em. There's a chance."

Jiangsi rolled the Captal over on his belly and taped his wrists. Woetjans looked sourly at the captive, then said to Adele, "Ah, mistress? How do you figure to go on from here?"

"Get all the prisoners out of the compound as planned," Adele said. "Dorst and Tavastierna will fly to the ship in their vehicle, the rest of us will go there in the Captal's. I suppose Koop should drive the van back; we said we'd return it."

"Mistress, time's awful short," the bosun said.

Adele nodded. "Yes," she said. "But I need to inform Lieutenant Mon about what I'm doing, which I'll do face-to-face rather than in any fashion that could be intercepted or recorded. He may request that Tovera and I carry on from here alone so that the ship can lift with as full a crew as possible."

"Right," said Woetjans. She bent and lifted the Captal by his bound wrists. He screamed until he got his feet under him to take the weight from his arms. "And the Senate may make me Speaker tomorrow—but the smart money bets that I'll be collecting bosun's pay for the next while."

She slung the Captal toward the stairwell. "Let's go tell Lieutenant Mon," she said, "that we'll be a while bringing the captain back to the Sissie."

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Framed

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Contents

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

_Hogg put his hand on Daniel's shoulder, pointed to the
ravine ahead of them, and said, "Not a bad place to take a break, master."

Daniel glanced toward the back of the line where Sun, as senior petty officer, should be marching to chivy in stragglers. He was there, all right, but little Vesey was guiding him along. Barnes walked alongside, carrying Sun's pack as well as his own.

Which Hogg had already noticed. "Unit, fall out in the ravine!" Daniel ordered. "Ten minute break! Captain out."

The spacers were tired, but they broke into a jog and grinned as they passed Daniel and Hogg. Dasi took Sun's left arm and helped Vesey move the gunner's mate into a trot also. Sun's legs moved when prodded, but his eyes had no life in them.

"We're going to be carrying him by the end of the day," Hogg murmured. "Fuck me if we're not."

Daniel looked at his rotund servant. "Yes," he said. "Maybe we'd better look for suitable poles here, just in case. We can use the ground cloth for a bed."

He followed Hogg down the bank, which sloped because wind had recently undercut the lip and dumped it as a scree of pebbles and adobe clay onto the base of the ravine. Midway he paused to survey the bank to either side, then went the rest of the way down. The crew had already chopped a small clearing in the brush so that they didn't have to hunch under arched branches.

Sentino sloshed water from the last of their three jerricans into a cup. The osmotic pump they'd set in the underground aquifer overnight had made up the seven or eight gallons they'd drunk from the original supply, but by mid-afternoon of this second day the spacers marching in dry air had absorbed ten gallons.

Sentino held the cup out to Daniel. "Here you go, sir," she said. "You get the cherry."

Rather than argue that he'd wait his turn—and besides, he was thirsty—Daniel took the cup and had it almost to his lips when the smell hit him. If he'd been out in the wind, he might have swallowed down most of the cup unawares, which would have been a great deal worse than going thirsty.

"Stop!" he said. "The water's contaminated. We'll have to discard the container, I'm afraid, because we don't have a means of cleaning it here."

Sun pushed Sentino aside and put his nose to the jerrican's wide mouth. He rose with a look of white rage. "God damn Pettin's shit-eating chicken-fucking whoreson excuses for spacers!" he shouted. His near stupor of moments before had passed. "And God damn me for accepting the cans without checking them!"

He picked up the jerrican by one of the paired handles on top and slung it a good twenty feet into the bushes. That was a remarkable throw for five gallons of water with the weight of the container.

"We got the jerricans from the Winckelmann, sir," Barnes explained softly. He and Dasi looked as miserable as Sun was angry. "The Sissie didn't have anything suitable, but the cruiser's outfitted for ground operations so we figured . . ."

"Traded them a bottle of brandy," Dasi said. Stolen from Delos Vaughn's baggage, no doubt. "It wasn't Mr. Sun's fault, sir, it was me and Barnes did it. And we didn't check the cans."

One of which had been used for some petroleum product, probably extra kerosine for the fuel cells of the Winckelmann's big aircar; and hadn't been properly cleaned afterwards. Nobody on the Princess Cecile had noticed the smell before filling the container with water. They'd been in a hurry, of course.

"I think we can blame Commodore Pettin for the difficulty," Daniel said mildly. "Though such a trivial business doesn't seem worthy of an officer of the commodore's demonstrated ability. Vesey, take two men and get the pump working."

"Sir, the flow back where we camped was only a gallon an hour," the midshipman said. "And that was in the rivercourse proper."

"Yes," Daniel said, "but I'm hopeful that we can find a more bountiful source in the meantime. Hogg, what do you think of the block of limestone right over . . ."

As Daniel spoke, he pushed his way along the edge of the ravine, to the right of the collapsed bank. For the first twenty feet it was merely a matter of muscling through twigs as dry as old bones. Just this side of the sandstone inclusion he'd seen as he entered the ravine grew a plant the size and shape of a wicker hassock. Its body consisted of strands curving up from the base to a central stem. A few had released their upper attachment and lay like whips on the ground.

"Ah," said Daniel. "Bring me one of the empty jerricans soonest."

The one filled with contaminated water would be even better, but Daniel didn't blame Sun for letting out his anger. Besides, the thing was done.

Dasi tossed an empty plastic container to Hogg, who passed it in turn to Daniel. "Everybody get down," Daniel said.

He squatted, judged the distance, and threw himself flat as he lobbed the jerrican. It landed in the center of the plant. There was a whap-pap-pap as all the remaining strands released simultaneously. The seeds at the ends of each, glass-hard and the size of marbles, flew forty feet in all directions. The can spun into the air, then dropped onto the ruins of the plant.

"A much better idea than bumping into it," Daniel said; preening himself on his observation, but doing it in so quiet a voice that not even Hogg could have heard him. He stepped past the plant to the rock plug.

"I think it's another burrow," Daniel said to his servant. "And I think there must be water inside, don't you? The creatures dig, and it wouldn't be any great trick to trench down into the aquifer so they could lap it up at need."

"Speaking of things I never needed to see again," Hogg muttered. Over his shoulder he called, "Get the shovels up here. The master and me are going after water."

Jeshonyk, a power room technician, brought the shovels. He stepped gingerly over the discharged bush, carefully avoiding putting his foot on any of the now-flaccid strands.

Daniel had seen Jeshonyk tighten a fitting under the Tokamak, working in the full knowledge that a slip wouldn't leave his mates so much as a pinch of ash to bury. He'd been wholly unconcerned by that risk, but the notion of a plant that shot bullets bothered him. It's all a matter of what you're used to. . . . 

Hogg handed Jeshonyk the impeller in exchange for shovels, then got to work with Daniel from opposite sides of the plug. Daniel could've passed the job off to one of the crewmen, but he probably had more experience with shovels than any of them did. It brought back memories of his boyhood, digging out Black-Scaled Rooters with Hogg.

You could lose your foot at the ankle from a rooter's teeth if you weren't quick. Daniel remembered that too.

He hit rock; he moved out a hand's breadth and put the blade in again, using all the strength of his upper body. This time it sank halfway and he stamped it fully in with the heel of his right boot.

He exchanged glances with Hogg, then both levered their shovels to the right and left in unison. A slab of dense clay fell away, baring a foot of the plug. It tapered to both ends and was wedged with smaller stones from within the burrow.

"I'll pull out the rock," Daniel said, thrusting the shovel into the ground beside him where it would be out of the way. "You be ready if anything decides to come out with it."

Hogg's lips pursed in consideration. "Right," he said. "Jeshonyk, I believe I'll take the gun back."

Daniel took the plug in both hands and wriggled it. The block weighed well over a hundred pounds, but nothing beyond its mass bound it into place from this side now that they'd dug the bank away.

Daniel drew back, gasping with controlled effort. Rotating his body he half lifted, half flung the plug into the brush behind him. As smoothly as if the same cam controlled him and his master, Hogg thrust the muzzle of the impeller into the hole—not to shoot, at least not instantly, but to physically prevent anything that tried to leap out.

Nothing did. The opening was lined with rock slabs. They weren't mortared into place, but they certainly weren't a natural occurrence. Distinct patches of light showed in the interior.

"Sir," said Sentino. She'd drawn her knife; with her left hand she unlatched her equipment belt and let it curl to the ground beside her. "I'll fit."

Daniel frowned. "Yes, all right," he said. He locked his visor down so that he could look into the burrow under light enhancement. "Barnes, Dasi. As soon as Sentino is clear, you'll start prying these blocks out so that a larger person—"

He patted his belly deliberately.

"—can get through the opening. And Sun, I'll take the other impeller, please."

"Sir," said the gunner's mate. He handed Daniel the weapon.

When Daniel used that tone, nobody argued—even if they fancied their own marksmanship beyond what they thought their captain was up to. Daniel had more real out-in-the-woods experience than any of the spacers, and he trusted himself not to shoot more than he did Sun or even Hogg.

He grinned at Sentino. "Go ahead," he said. "And Jeshonyk, you're probably the next thinnest. Take your gear off and get ready to pull Sentino back by the ankles if she gets stuck."

"Stuck!" Sentino sneered. She squirmed into the opening with as little difficulty as the creature from the night before had shown when it escaped. In truth, there wasn't much difference in weight, and the spacer had more of hers in her legs and arms.

Her boots disappeared down the tunnel. Barnes and Dasi lunged into their work, chopping the shovel blades into the bank and ripping away the dirt. They were used to working together. Even though this task wasn't a familiar one, they didn't get in each other's way.

One slab sagged, then the whole construct collapsed on itself. Barnes thrust his shovel in high, then lowered it and dragged out several feet of rock and dirt with the back edge.

Hogg looked at Daniel and raised an eyebrow in approval. They'd both dug enough holes to appreciate how much strength Barnes's action had required. Dasi leaned forward and cleaned much of the remainder.

"Unit, I'm through," Sentino called over the intercom. "Holy God, it's a real cavern in here! It opens up just a couple yards in and it's huge!"

"I'm next," Sun said, stripping off his belt and flexing his shoulders. He grinned apologetically at Daniel. "Get some command authority in there."

Anger and a direct need for him had brought the gunner's mate back from a funk that seemed even more unreal now that it was past. Sun simply wasn't a man you could imagine that happening to.

"Right," said Daniel. "Take a shovel with you. I don't know how far I trust this tunnel now that we've widened it—"

He moved aside. Barnes and Dasi stepped back together with their shovel heads locked, making a final sweep of the debris.

"—and I want us to be able to grub it out from both sides if there's a cave-in."

Sun put his knife in his teeth and took the shovel from Barnes. He thrust it ahead of him as he followed Sentino.

"Barnes," Daniel said, nodding to the man. Anything Barnes's shoulders cleared would probably pass Hogg's belly, so it was a good test. "Miquelon, Jeshonyk, Dasi, Hogg, and me. Hogg, you take your impeller."

Nobody protested at the order of entry, not that a protest was going to change anything. There was a risk to splitting his small force, but Daniel was unwilling to let one or two of his personnel scout a burrow system that held scores or possibly hundreds of the creatures who'd dug it. A team of eight with an impeller could support itself.

"Vesey, you and your section will watch our gear and the entrance from outside," Daniel continued. Barnes had grunted his way into the tunnel and Miquelon was ready to follow; she held her equipment belt ahead of her rather than dropping it on the ground as the others had. "You'll have a shovel and the other impeller. Don't get frozen on the hole. There have to be other entrances, and we don't need whoever's inside—"

He'd meant to say "whatever," not "whoever."

"—to swarm around us from behind, all right? Over."

Vesey and Matahurd stood in sight at the corner of a bush whose tasseled crown fluttered occasionally like a stand of ultramarine flags. The midshipman trotted forward to take the weapon and shovel, speaking briskly. Daniel couldn't hear the words, so she was addressing the members of her section alone over the intercom.

Daniel nodded mentally, though his head didn't really move. She had the makings of a good officer.

"I don't expect you'll have any trouble," Daniel said as he gave Vesey the impeller. "But if I were sure of that, I wouldn't leave a guard to begin with."

Hogg, wheezing like a rooting sow, thrust himself into the burrow. Daniel waited a comfortable five seconds and followed. It was tight, but never so constricting that he wondered if he was going to be caught. At the far end of a tunnel no longer than the six feet Sentino had estimated was—

Well, was a paradise of pastel light and plants which swooped toward the twenty-foot ceiling like constructions of cast plastic. The spacers wandered among them in amazement. The air was noticeably more humid than that in the ravine outside.

"Don't get out of sight of one another!" Daniel said. Besides humidity, the air was perfumed. Gnatlike insects drifted through the mist of light, and—

"Where's the light coming from?" Daniel called, lifting his visor out of the way. He didn't need its enhancement nor protection from windblown grit. "Hogg, can you tell?"

"Sir, I think it's just blocks of quartz built into the ceiling for light guides," Jeshonyk said, pointing his arm as Daniel joined him under one of the bright patches. It was a good eight feet in diameter, made of quartz wedged into place with other bits of stone. The contruction was similar to that of the entranceway lining.

"Naw, it can't be," Dasi said, prodding one of the gorgeous plants with the point of his knife. "We'd have seen it from up above. Look, you can see a whole line of them down this tunnel. No way we could've missed all of that."

Daniel squinted. There were at least . . . ten bright patches in the ceiling, with more merging into the distance beyond just as Dasi said. The separation between pairs was about thirty feet, making Daniel's estimate of possibly hundreds of creatures in the burrow now seem absurdly low. Besides this central aisle of plantings, narrow passages led off to either side.

Daniel considered the pattern of light and shadow above him. The quartz blocks weren't uniformly translucent, and the faces refracted light so that the composite lens looked as though a giant spiderweb lay across it. Even so, Daniel could see that the western edge was brighter than the east.

"I believe Jeshonyk's right when he says light guides," Daniel said. "Given the depth of the floor here beneath the bottom of the ravine, there's about six feet of roof. If the inlets slant outward, they'll catch some light whenever the sun's up—but there won't be any huge mass of quartz on the surface like there is down here at the outlet."

"What kinda animal does that?" a spacer asked. Nobody replied, perhaps because the answer was too obvious when you thought about it.

Sun dug the shovel into the cavern wall, then withdrew it with a puzzled expression. Only a trickle of dirt followed the blade. "Hey, Captain?" he said. "There's plastic on the walls or something."

Daniel walked over to the petty officer, rounding a plant set into the floor in a stone-lined tub. All the cavern's vegetation was soft-bodied though it was more the size of trees than ordinary plants. The genera were unfamiliar to Daniel; certainly they weren't native to Sexburga's arid surface today.

"I know what it is," offered Dasi, holding up his left index finger. On it gleamed a drop of clear sap from the wound he'd pricked in the plant he was examining. "Hell, they gotta cover the walls with something or it'd all fall in, right?"

"How's chances we find some water and get the hell outa here?" Hogg muttered. He held the impeller across his chest, ready to spin in any direction and throw the weapon to his shoulder. He was perfectly poised, but he was also as uncomfortable as Daniel had ever seen him.

Daniel touched the wall with his bare hand. As Sun had said, there was a clear, slightly resilient, coating over the gritty clay. It felt warm to the touch.

"Yes, we'll do that," Daniel said, but his mind was more on the wonder of this place than it was on Hogg's question or the more general business of reaching the beacon to summon help. They wouldn't delay here—they had their duty, after all—but by heaven! what a report Commodore Pettin and the civilized universe would get. "This was perhaps the most scientifically useful piece of make-work and treachery that I've ever heard of."

"Hey, look!" Sentino cried. She darted into the passage.

Daniel heard a spreek! that might have been Sentino but probably wasn't. He stabbed his knife into the sidewall to free his hands and ducked to follow the crewman down the passage. He wasn't sure even Sentino would clear the low ceiling if she stood upright.

He supposed she was still carrying her knife in her hand. She almost had to be, since she'd left the sheath with the rest of her belt gear. Grabbing a creature with teeth like the one last night bare-handed was dangerous, but Daniel would just as soon Sentino not stab—

"I got—" she called. There was a tearing-paper sound. Sentino staggered back into Daniel's arms; the knife slipped from her flaccid right hand. Dropping the remains of a fist-sized puffball on the passage floor, the creature she'd grabbed with her left squirmed away. It began to dig furiously in the sidewall with spadelike forepaws.

There was a dry smell in the air, dizzying though not unpleasant. Daniel slapped his visor down with his left hand and felt the filters clamp his nostrils.

The hairless creature looked sideways at him through the spraying dirt and gave a wail of despair. Daniel grabbed Sentino under the arms and backed, pulling her with him. She was a dead weight, but he could feel her heart beating strongly through her coveralls.

Something came around the bend just beyond where the creature was digging into the sidewall. It completely filled the passage, brushing cascades of soil down where its shoulders rubbed. Daniel couldn't get a good look at it since his own body blocked most of the light coming from the main gallery, but he could tell that it was black and bigger than he was.

The smaller creature went "Wheek! Wheek! Wheek!" and vanished, apparently dropping into an adjacent passage. The newcomer paused, its eyes focused on Daniel and Sentino. Its four canines projected forward to crisscross like paired ice-tongs, perfect tools to take living prey. It hunched like a cat preparing to spring.

Daniel stepped over his crewman's body. "Unit, get Sentino out of here!" he shouted. "Somebody drag her—"

The predator flowed toward him like a snake striking. It pushed off with its spatulate forepaws but folded them back against its sides in the course of the motion.

Daniel caught it by the neck, shoulder-broad and covered with a ruff of bristles. The fangs clashed just in front of his visor. The impact was like that of a charging bull. Daniel had braced himself, but it threw him back anyway.

His right boot tramped something soft—Sentino's outflung hand, but he lifted his foot and felt her snatched back with no more ceremony than a case of rations would get. That was fine: dinner was just what she'd be if they didn't get her back quickly.

Daniel couldn't hold the creature, didn't want to hold it, but if he didn't continue fighting it would push him over backward. Then the only question was whether it'd tear his throat out or start by devouring his belly.

"Watch this bastard!" he wheezed. "I don't know how big . . ."

His toes skidded slowly backward down the passage. He felt his left knee start to buckle. He twisted that foot sideways in a desperate attempt to get more traction.

The jaws closed again. This time the tip of one lower fang hit Daniel's visor and slammed his helmet against the passage roof. Despite the shock-absorbant liner, Daniel's consciousness shattered into white light. As he felt himself going over, he kicked out blindly with both feet.

The predator made its first sound, a whuff of surprise as Daniel's bootheels hammered its muzzle. It flowed forward again.

Hogg, leaning over his master, socketed the impeller in the predator's right eye and squeezed the trigger. The whack! of the weapon's circuitry merged with the CRASH! of dense bone disintegrating at the impact of the hypersonic pellet.

The creature lurched into the central gallery and sprawled, its paddlelike hind legs covering Daniel's torso. Its body struck Hogg and sent him spinning away, though he still kept hold of the impeller. Sun drove the shovel into the creature's neck; it skidded off, gouging the floor and narrowly missing Daniel's hand. Other spacers were hacking with their knives.

"Get back!" Daniel shouted. "It's dead! Back away before you hurt somebody!"

He clutched his hands in to his chest, reminded by the comment that "somebody" might very well be him. The creature's head and feet twisted upward in a convulsion; Daniel used the respite to snatch his body clear of a weight that he hadn't been able to shift with his own strength.

He got shakily to his feet. Barnes put an arm around him and lifted him several steps back to where the creature's spastic movements couldn't knock him down again. Its limbs were modified for digging, but claws that cut through rocky clay would be just as destructive if they met human bone and muscle.

The creature flopped over on its spine and finished dying. Hogg's pellet had lifted the back off its skull, but the face wasn't seriously damaged save that one eyesocket was empty.

It weighed half a ton. It was as ugly as anything Daniel had ever seen. The foul breath that had blown from its mouth as it attacked now hung over the body like a miasma.

Apart from the crossed fangs, however, the face was undeniably human.

The Princess Cecile's utility aircar was little more than a frame linking a quartet of fan nacelles to the open-topped cabin where Adele, Tovera, and two spacers sat on benches of metal webbing. Adele shifted. The seats weren't as uncomfortable as they looked, but they looked very uncomfortable.

Tavastierna landed with only a moderate bang and bounce. That was a creditable performance given the car's heavy load, but Adele scowled anyway. She knew it wasn't fair to expect professional competence from a rigger who hadn't driven an aircar in months, but "fair" didn't have much to do with the present situation. The operation had very little margin for error.

"Shut off the motors!" she said, shouting to be heard over the whine of the fans spinning at zero angle of attack. Tavastierna looked surprised since their helmet intercoms would easily damp that level of external noise, but he obeyed without question.

"I've cut off helmet communications from now until we execute the entry," Adele said as the blades wound down octave by octave. "They could be overheard. I doubt whether the Captal's staff is that alert, but I don't choose to take a chance with the lives of our shipmates."

And our own, come to think of it, though that isn't the first priority for me at the moment, she added internally.

Tavastierna had landed behind a ridge whose front side was a little over a thousand yards from the knoll on which the Captal da Lund had built his fortress. Even Adele could have climbed the slope on this side; Dorst and Tavastierna wouldn't raise a sweat. The weight of the guns the men carried—Dorst a stocked impeller, Tavastierna a submachine gun for the team's own protection—wasn't a significant factor either.

"Dorst, are you still comfortable with this?" Adele said. "Tovera can take over now if you have any concerns. Being unwilling to kill another human being is nothing to be ashamed of."

"No, ma'am," the midshipman agreed. "But you don't need to worry. I've trained for this."

When Adele checked the crew list for a sniper, she'd learned to her surprise that Dorst had been on the Academy marksmanship team and had won trophies in long-range competition. He'd assured her that his training involved hostage simulations rather than merely bull's-eye targets. He'd never done it for real—killed—but Adele well knew the effectiveness of training like what Dorst described.

A six-wheeled delivery van was trundling down the road from Spires; it would reach them in a few minutes. Adele and Tovera would join the spacers in the cargo box during the time the vehicle was out of sight of the Captal's residence, unless she decided to leave this job to Tovera after all.

Adele's servant looked at her and smiled. "He'll be all right, mistress," Tovera said. "If anything goes wrong, you or me can fix it then."

"Nothing's going to go wrong," Dorst said stolidly.

"No, I don't suppose it is," Adele said. She tried to smile. It doubtless looked forced, but her natural expression at times like these was something that only a sociopath like Tovera could find humor in. "Dorst, Tavastierna—you'd better get into position. Captain Leary is counting on you."

The spacers nodded and started up the slope at an amazingly fast pace. They moved like a rigger and a healthy young athlete, not a librarian with a tendency to trip over her own feet, of course.

It was odd what you remembered. The most vivid recollection Adele had of the duel she'd fought when she was sixteen wasn't the face of the boy when her bullet hit: it was instead the pink mist in the air behind him, a mush of blood and fresh brains. The simulators she'd used for hours in her parents' townhouse hadn't prepared her for that.

The van's suspension squealed and rattled as it approached. They—the Republic of Cinnabar, paying with funds which Mistress Sand had put at Adele's disposal—were renting the vehicle for a sum not much short of what it had cost new. Just in case, though, the vehicle's Sexburgan owner and its regular driver were aboard the Princess Cecile with all they wanted to drink. Half a dozen spacers were sitting with them to make sure that they didn't decide to leave and maybe call the Captal.

Tovera shifted her body, working muscle groups with a minimum of movement. She was perfectly cool, but after all she had no more emotion than the submachine gun in her hands. She looked at Adele and said, "I wouldn't be any better at long range than you would, mistress. Though I suppose either of us could manage if the need arose."

"I suppose," Adele agreed coldly. Why should it bother her that Tovera considered her mistress and herself merely a pair of killers at this moment? It was true, after all.

Unlike Adele, Tovera had no conscience. But that wouldn't make any difference. It never had before.

The van pulled up beside the aircar. Koop was driving, wearing a Sexburgan caftan and a soft cap. The rest of the team were in RCN utilities, comfortable and unobtrusively colored. If this event went wrong, there was no chance of hiding who was responsible for it, no matter what they wore.

Well, Adele didn't intend that it go wrong.

Woetjans lifted the roller gate and jerked Adele into the cargo box. Bemish offered Tovera a hand, but she'd already hopped aboard with her usual economy. Tovera didn't look graceful, but she moved without error. It was rather like watching a door open and close. The motion was without art, but it was always the same and always flawless.

"Go!" Woetjans shouted, and the van accelerated from its rolling stop. There were five spacers in the back; Koop drove with a submachine gun under a towel on the seat beside him. More personnel would have crowded the vehicle and wouldn't, in the opinion of Woetjans and Mon, have contributed to the success of the operation.

There were twenty-one people in the Captal's compound; the number hadn't changed since Dorotige had returned from South Land. They were on alert, but that was different from really being alert. The van delivered food to the compound on a regular schedule. The guards would search the vehicle, but they wouldn't be surprised to see it arriving.

Adele smiled faintly. The surprise would come shortly after that arrival.

Adele looked at the faces around her, lighted through the opera window in one of the door's upper slats. "Is everyone ready for this?" she asked, more because the spacers seemed to expect something from her than out of real concern for the answer.
"Ain't we just!" said Liebig, hugging his submachine gun to his chest. The others' guttural sounds of approval blended well with the groans of the van's suspension.

Adele put her visor down momentarily to check the distance to the Captal's front gate. She still wasn't comfortable with getting information from the helmet display; it made her resentful and more than a little angry not to be able to be able to use her personal data unit in normal fashion.

Normally she wouldn't be bouncing around in the back of a delivery van. Besides, the helmet display worked perfectly well as it read down the distance in yards: 831, 830, 829—a lurch as the vehicle rounded a switchback and its transmission shifted to a lower gear—827 . . .

Moronick began to sing under his breath: "When I'm home you call me sugar honey, but when I'm gone . . ." His thumb covered and uncovered the receiver switch that controlled his impeller's power. It was in the off, safe, position. He didn't turn it on, but the touch of the plastic fascinated him.

" . . . you run around and play."

Adele was the only one of those present who didn't carry a shoulder weapon, either a submachine gun or a semiautomatic impeller throwing heavy slugs. There was a small pistol in her left side pocket. It was the weapon she knew, the weapon she pointed as if her eye and not her hand controlled it.

It would do. It had done many times in the past.

The van slowed gradually, then slewed shrieking to the right as a brake grabbed. 14, 13, 11 . . . Koop corrected with his steering wheel and brought them to a juddering halt.

Adele could hear the wind now, blowing the last of the grit kicked up by the truck's wheels against the metal body. "Hey, where's Mariakakis?" an unfamiliar voice called.

"Mariakakis tells the boss he wants a raise," Koop said. The cab door opened, then slammed. "Boss tells Mariakakis fuck your raise, you're not worth what I pay you now. Mariakakis says fuck your job, then. And me, I get promoted when I just started work."

Adele blinked. Her impression of Koop was that he was rather more dense than the run of spacers. She'd told him to say, "Mariakakis is sick today," if asked. Koop's embellishment was wholly convincing, even though she knew it was nonsense.

"Yeah, well, get the back open and let's take a look," the gateman said, his voice moving along the side of the van as boots crunched on the road metal. Everyone in the cargo compartment squatted. Woetjans handed her impeller to Bemish and drew an arm's-length piece of high-pressure tubing from beneath her belt.

"Dorotige's got a wild hair up his ass and not letting us into town when we're off duty," the gateman continued. "There better be extra booze in this—"

The door rattled at Koop's touch, then shot upward as fast as Liebig and Gansevoort could raise it from the inside.

"—shipment—hey!!"

The gateman was a lanky fellow whose ginger whiskers tried to cover serious acne scars. Woetjans grabbed his throat with her left hand.

WHACK! sounded from the top of the stone guard tower.

Woetjans rang the tubing off the gateman's skull, knocking off his mauve beret and putting a welt across his forehead. He went limp in her grip. Adele grabbed the keypad chained to his belt and punched in 5154, the code that raised the gate today. She could have entered the compound's security system through its communications link, but this was faster and simpler.

The body of the guard who'd watched from the tower's walkway fell flat on the ground beside the vehicle. There was a hole precisely between her staring eyes; apart from that she looked perfectly normal. From the amount of matter oozing through the fan of her hair, the slug had removed the back of her skull like the top of a soft-boiled egg.

The gate's two leaves cammed open; the row of spikes beyond began to sink into concrete sheaths. Koop scrambled back into the cab, pausing to snatch up the hat he'd lost in the flurry of activity.

The door at the foot of the guard tower was open. Adele and Gansevoort jumped out of the cargo compartment as Woetjans slung the unconscious gateman behind her rather than leave him on the ground. The sprawled corpse couldn't be seen through the open gate.

"Go!" Adele said, but it was only her adrenaline-speeded senses that made it seem that Koop was delaying. The van jerked into motion, making those in the cargo compartment sway forward and back. Under cover of the vehicle, Adele and the spacer with her darted into the tower.

The van's back door was still open. Woetjans had retrieved her impeller from Liebig. The bosun's face had a detached expression, as though she were deciding who to assign to a mildly onerous duty.

Stairs led up from the anteroom of the guard tower. Through the other door was an office with a couch and refrigerator besides the control station. Adele sat at the control station while Gansevoort took the stairs two at a time, heading for the automatic impeller on top of the tower. He was Sun's striker, working toward a rating of gunner's mate.

The display was swirling pearly light. Adele brought up the main screen. A dozen keystrokes took her through the interlocks to first enter the security system, then to take complete control of all the compound's electronics. She displayed the courtyard imagery in a corner so that as she worked she could see the van driving past the barracks to the separated power room.

The power room door stood open, so she didn't have to bother unlocking it. Woetjans had a crate of explosives in the van against the possibility that the door would be closed with a manual bolt, but Adele was glad they could avoid noise for the moment.

Her control station had a touchplate. Adele's finger's danced across it, moving with precision if not what she would call verve. First she shut down communications to the other two guard towers, then switched their power off as well. The automatic impellers could still be fired, but without power traverse the guards would have to horse the weapons around manually to aim toward the courtyard. That would take minutes that they most certainly would not be allowed.

The van stopped in front of the power room. Woetjans led the four spacers with her into the squat building. The van, with Tovera now in the cab with Koop, made a U-turn and drove toward the Captal's residence.

Woetjans looked out of the power room and waved her free hand. "Ready, Gansevoort?" Adele called over the intercom.

"Ready!" Gansevoort answered, so loudly that his voice echoed down the stairwell. The building vibrated as his impeller turned inward.

Adele keyed the fire alarms for the barracks and the residence building. An electronic wail filled the compound.

Nothing happened for a moment. Adele disconnected the power to both buildings. A moment later a servant wearing puffed red-and-yellow garments ran from the residence and three half-dressed guards from the barracks. They looked around in a mixture of anger and confusion.

"Stay in the open!" Adele boomed over the public-address system. She turned off the siren. Woetjans and three of her team walked toward the barracks, their weapons aimed. "No one will be har—"

The house servant turned. His arms flailed and he sprawled across the threshold at the feet of two more liveried servants.

Tovera got out of the van, pointing her submachine gun one-handed in what might have looked a negligent fashion to anyone who hadn't just seen her shoot. She beckoned the two surviving servants toward her with her free hand. One remained transfixed; the other knelt, clasped his hands, and lowered his head in prayer.

"No one will be harmed if you cooperate!" Adele said. Her amplified voice rumbled through the open doorways, cold and hectoring. The guards who were already in the open didn't try to run in the face of the spacers' guns, but no more came from the barracks.

Adele's brain warned her of movement. Instinct slid the pistol from her pocket, but the threat showed on her panoramic display rather than in the room with her.

"Northeast tower!" she shouted. "He's—"

The tower guard braced himself on the catwalk rail, holding his pistol in both hands, and fired across the courtyard. Dust flew from the facade of the residence.

Tovera turned like mercury flowing. Even before she could fire, the top of the northeast tower erupted into dust, chunks of stone, and streaks of vivid color where osmium slugs struck the turret's metal fittings. Adele's control station vibrated with the violence of Gansevoort's long burst above her.

Gansevoort stopped firing. Woetjans' team and the guards in front of the barracks had thrown themselves on the ground. Bits continued to drop off the crumbled tower: the slugs had chewed away the west face of the railing and turret. The wind drifted dust from the compound like torn russet gauze. The only visible portion of the guard was his right arm lying among the debris in the courtyard, severed at the elbow by fifty grains of osmium moving at Mach 8.

"Everyone in the barracks," Adele said, "come out unarmed, now! In thirty seconds we'll begin raking the building until it falls in and crushes everyone who hasn't been killed by the projectiles."

Another man came from the barracks, doubled over as if he were walking into a storm. Liebig taped his arms behind him. Two more guards crept out, their hands high. A woman came from the south tower, stumbling in her haste.

Woetjans cupped her hands and shouted in the direction of the gate. Adele grimaced and switched the helmet intercoms live again. "Unit, your helmets work now," she said. "Signals out."

"Signals, that's everybody from here," Woetjans voice said in synchrony with her lips on the other side of the courtyard. "There's six servants and a guard in the residence with the boss, they say. Team One over."

"Team One, all right," Adele said, rising to her feet. "Leave a guard on the captives and join me at the residence. Ah, out."

She'd never get used to RCN communications protocols. Of course, communications had never interested her very much. Knowledge for its own sake had been her focus.

She was smiling as she walked from the gate tower toward the residence building. A great deal had changed since she met Lt. Daniel Leary.

For the most part the spacers were exhilarated from the operation's present success. Bemish was babbling that by God we're showing these wogs how it's done, but Adele didn't let her distaste for the vulgar chauvinism touch the surface of her mind.

Koop alone looked reserved. That was perhaps his normal reaction to things going well, but equally it might have had something to do with the bloodstains on his uniform where he'd knelt while securing the two living servants.

Tovera switched the ammunition tube under her weapon's barrel for a fully loaded one from the pouch on her left side. Her eyes darted in all directions, and her smile was as thin and cold as a streak of hoarfrost.

"Three servants are in the kitchen, hiding behind the central counter," Adele said. "They may as well stay there for now."

She shook her head at the silliness of anyone thinking they could hide in a building with a surveillance system as complete as the Captal's. Even his private suite was covered, though he probably believed he'd switched the cameras off when he realized that the compound was under attack.

"The owner is in his bedroom on the second floor," Adele continued. "One guard is in the main room of the suite with a gun trained on the door. That has a mechanical bar, so we'll have to blow it down."

"Right," Woetjans said. "That's you, Jiangsi."

The maintenance tech nodded. He was leaning against the doorjamb so that it supported some of the weight of his pack.

"Mistress?" Liebig asked. He'd looked hungrily at the Captal's big aircar when he trotted past it beside the bosun. "The guy inside isn't the one who flew the captain away, is he? Because if he is, he might know . . ."

"The driver, Dorotige, was the last one to come out of the barracks," Tovera said. Like Adele herself, she was using imagery from the compound's internal system to view their opponents.

The tip of Tovera's tongue touched her lips. "The man inside, preparing to die for his master, is named benYamani. There's no reason we shouldn't take him up on his offer."

"We'll give him another chance to surrender anyway," Adele said. She nodded to the open door. "Let's go."

In Adele's normal state of mind she would have been irritated by Tovera's enthusiasm for killing. At present—

She glanced down at the cratered back of the servant who'd tried to run. Blood was congealing in the holes where velocity had disintegrated the ten-grain pellets like tiny bombs when they struck.

If there is a God, may She forbid that I ever find this sort of business normal. 

Woetjans left a man in the doorway and another in the foyer, then led the way up the staircase. Adele had locked the kitchen door and shut off the elevator, so there was no need of a guard down here. They wouldn't need another man upstairs either, though, so she didn't comment on the bosun's arrangements.

An ornate metal door stood in the center of the second floor's semicircular anteroom. It was finished to look like bronze, but Adele knew from the contractor's specifications that it was actually tungsten over a core of lime.

"System," Adele said as they faced the door. She'd set the compound's intercom to be cued by her helmet. "Mister benYamani, unbolt the door and surrender. We won't harm you or your master. We've come here to get information, that's all."

There was no response. "Mistress?" Tovera said.

Adele grimaced. It was so unnecessary. "Yes, go ahead," she said.

"Officer Woetjans," Tovera said, holding out her submachine gun. "Let me trade weapons with you for a moment."

The bosun looked startled but handed over the stocked impeller when Adele nodded. Tovera, aiming by the image projected on her visor, pointed the weapon at the wall to the right of the armored door.

The whack! of the shot was startlingly loud in the enclosed space. The slug's driving band flashed as it ionized; it was a ghostly yellow glow remained in the air for several seconds. The wall was of thick structural plastic, intended to deaden sound but not to stop rounds from an impeller. Chips flew into the anteroom and a cavity the size of a soup dish spalled off the inside.

The slug continued straight and true. The waiting guard leaped up, rolled over a table, and fell prone across the hand-knotted carpet. His blood splashed a broad pattern around the hole the slug took through the wall of the Captal's bedroom.

Tovera gave the impeller back to Woetjans. "That should do," she said.

Adele squatted and took out her personal data unit; the helmet's inputs weren't sufficient for what she needed now. At a nod from the bosun, Jiangsi shrugged off his pack and began lifting out blocks of explosive with the blasting caps already in preformed sockets.

"Wait," said Adele, concentrating on her display. "We could do more damage than we intend with that."

"You want me to take down the wall instead of the door, mistress?" Jiangsi offered. "That won't be hard."

"Wait," Adele repeated.

She turned on the vision panel above the Captal's huge circular bed and routed to it the output of the security camera in the main room of suite; she focused the image closely on what was left of the guard's head. The slug must have been tumbling slightly when it came through the wall.

"Captal da Lund!" Adele said through the intercom. "We will let you and all your surviving personnel go free once you've answered our questions about what happened to Lieutenant Leary. Open the door to your suite. If we have to blow our way in, there's a possibility you'll be killed and a near certainty that you'll be badly injured."

"No `near' about that," Woetjans muttered. Her big scarred hand patted the length of tubing in her belt. She'd wrapped tape around one end for a better grip.

"You've got thirty seconds," Adele continued. "I'm going to begin counting down. Thirty, twenty-nine—"

The man cowering in the bedroom suddenly snatched open his door. "Wait!" he cried. "For the love of God, wait!"

Adele rose to her feet and put her data unit back in its pocket. She lifted her visor; she didn't need to watch further. The spacers tensed, but Tovera merely shook her head in disappointment.

The bar scraped on the other side of the door. When Woetjans heard it click free of the staples, she kicked the panel open with the heel of her boot. It bloodied the Captal's nose as it knocked him down.

Adele had never seen the exiled dictator in the flesh. He would have looked distinguished under most circumstances, but blubbering so that tears streaked the blood on his cheeks was not his best moment. Woetjans and Jiangsi thrust their guns in his face.

"Please, please, I'll pay you more money than you ever dreamed!" the Captal cried. "I'll make you rich for life, only don't kill me!"

It was funny in its way. "Tovera," Adele said. "How much money would it take for you not to kill this gentleman if I told you to do it?"

"If you allowed me to do it, you mean, mistress," Tovera said. They were playing a game, she and her mistress, but every word of it was true. She shrugged. "I don't need money, mistress."

Adele was unable to keep to keep from sneering when she looked down at the sniveling exile, but perhaps that was the right expression for the purpose anyway. "When you've told us how to find Lieutenant Leary," she said evenly, "we'll release you and your personnel."

"They're all right, they're perfectly safe," the Captal said. He'd pulled his knees up to his chest and his fingers covered his face, pressing to either side of his nose. Was it broken, or was it simply fear that had so unmanned him? "It was nothing to do with me, really, I was just helping Vaughn out of friendship for his father. Getting your captain out of the way so that no one would give the alarm until Vaughn was safely back on Strymon."

Woetjans tapped the Captal's left wrist with her impeller muzzle. The heat shield was still hot from the recently fired slug; the prisoner jerked his hand down with a cry of terror.

"Where?" Woetjans said. "Or I'll tie your dick to the aircar and fly back to town. So help me God."

"At Site Two on South Land!" the Captal cried. "Dorotige took them there, he can find them again. Besides, it's in the car's navigation system!"

Adele frowned. "Is that true?" she asked the bosun.

Woetjans shrugged. "Likely enough," she said. "Liebig'll know."

She switched to intercom. Her lips continued to move, but the helmet's dampers smothered the words. A moment later she nodded and said, "Yeah, that's right unless they cleared the system. Liebig's going to check the car right now."

"We weren't going to do Leary any harm," the Captal said. "Just keep him out of the way till your fleet had gone. He had plenty of food with him and there's water at the site. And then Dorotige would have flown him and his servants back."

The Captal had brought his right hand to his face again but seemed generally to have relaxed. A good sign, Adele supposed. The heat shield hadn't even raised a blister. From the way he'd jumped, one might have thought his hand was being singed off.

"Mistress?" Woetjans said. "Liebig says that's right, the navigation record's still intact. If he can use that car, likely he can drive back himself to get the captain."

"We'll use the car," Adele said. "We'll take this gentleman and Mr. Dorotige with us as guides, however. Just in case."

The Captal slowly lowered his hands and let his legs extend slightly. "And then you'll let me go?" he said, his voice husky with fear.

"Yes, we will," Adele said. "And if Daniel and all his crew, his servants as you called them, are all right, we'll even leave you food."

Woetjans grinned, though she still had a worried expression. "Let's get going," she said. "I don't see any way in hell we're going to get the captain back before time the squadron's supposed to lift, but maybe the Winckelmann'll lose all her thrusters when she lights 'em. There's a chance."

Jiangsi rolled the Captal over on his belly and taped his wrists. Woetjans looked sourly at the captive, then said to Adele, "Ah, mistress? How do you figure to go on from here?"

"Get all the prisoners out of the compound as planned," Adele said. "Dorst and Tavastierna will fly to the ship in their vehicle, the rest of us will go there in the Captal's. I suppose Koop should drive the van back; we said we'd return it."

"Mistress, time's awful short," the bosun said.

Adele nodded. "Yes," she said. "But I need to inform Lieutenant Mon about what I'm doing, which I'll do face-to-face rather than in any fashion that could be intercepted or recorded. He may request that Tovera and I carry on from here alone so that the ship can lift with as full a crew as possible."

"Right," said Woetjans. She bent and lifted the Captal by his bound wrists. He screamed until he got his feet under him to take the weight from his arms. "And the Senate may make me Speaker tomorrow—but the smart money bets that I'll be collecting bosun's pay for the next while."

She slung the Captal toward the stairwell. "Let's go tell Lieutenant Mon," she said, "that we'll be a while bringing the captain back to the Sissie."

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