Counter-Measures

  . they . . . "

  "Go on."

  She straightened primly. "I tell you this only because you are a woman and seem to know the way of such things. I will hold you to your honor, and the honor of your family, whatever that might be, not to mention this. But perhaps knowing will help you in your pursuit. He coupled with her on the desk. Right there in his office. I can't tell you how I know, but I do."

  Skyla raised a hand. "It's her way. She usually kills immediately afterward. "

  Magrite kept her eyes averted. "I have told you everything, impostor. Go now, do what you can. If you find Arta Fera or her master, and if you avenge Pedro Maroon, let my clan know."

  "We will." Skyla hesitated. "Magrite. May I have copies of the files they accessed? "

  She shook her head in negation. "I cannot allow you to see what it is not in my permission to grant ... even if I wanted to."

  "But the Vegan authorities would have exact duplicates?"

  "They would. For that, you would have to go to Vega and make your case for access."

  I'my people will, Magrite. And when they do, they will inform the council of your noted clan's honor and worthiness. Good profit to you and your family, lady. May your trades be made wisely and your journeys safe."

  "May your family prosper, Lady Silk. Good health and profits to you on your endeavor. "

  Skyla nodded, refastening her scarf. She was in the process of giving Magrite a final nod when the door opened. The uniformed officers stepped warily to either side of the doorway, hands on stun rods.

  "You are the Regan trader known as Silk?" the tall blond one asked.

  Skyla nodded, bowing low as her hand dipped into her pocket and gripped the handle of her blaster. "Good day, gentlemen. I am Silk."

  "You are under arrest." The tall blond officer raised his stun rod.

  Skyla shot him full in the chest, her blaster ripping through the fabric of her robe. Her weapon ripped the air again, the violet beam blowing the second man's arm from his body as he pivoted to lift his own stun rod.

  Fast on her feet, Skyla dropped on him, kicking away the pistol he clawed out of his holster with his good hand. :'Talk! What's your name?"

  'Pus Rot you, Regan bitch."

  The security officer screamed as Skyla hammered the bloody stump of his shattered arm. "Talk, Rot you, or I won't put a tourniquet on this wound.

  You've got less than two minutes of consciousness. How do you want to spend it? In pain? Or in polite talk?"

  He screeched again as she stamped a booted foot on his ragged stump. "Talk?"

  "He's bleeding to death on my floor!" Magrite whispered in horror.

  "Rotted right he is," Skyla agreed. "Want to take bets he was one of the men who carried Pedro's dead body out of here? What's your name, pal?"

  "Vy-Vymer! You're dead, bitch. The Director won't let you get away with this."

  .Ah, the Director. Now we're getting somewhere. You've got a minute left. Want to spill your guts?"

  "Fuck you, bitch. " Vymer's face had gone white.

  At that moment, the door burst open as Lark charged in. Reflexively, Skyla pivoted at the hips. Her weapon locked in an isosceles hold, she lined her sights on the girl's chest, index finger resting firmly on the firing stud.

  Lark gaped in horror and tried to stop her headlong rush. She slipped in the blood that had spewed from Vymer's arm and the torn chest of his companion-and recovered in a windmilling of arms.

  At the last instant, Skyla hesitated. "You've got a lot of explaining to do, girl."

  CHAPTER 21

  From: Engineer First, Dee Wall

  Director, Countermeasures Project Itreata Free Zone To: Lord Commander, Staffa kar Therma Companion Force: Battleship Chrysla Geosynchronous orbit off Targa

  Greetings and best wishes from myself and my staff. It is with great pleasure that I forward information concerning our first successful test. I have hesitated to inform you of the constant disasters we have experienced, and take full responsibility based on my belief that your needs wouldn't have been best served by repeated reports of failure.

  To wit, we have finally managed to measure gravitational interaction with the gauge-symmetry of the oscillating string nearest the Forbidden Borders.

  Working with Lorentz-invariant field equations, we've detected gravitational interference. Our methodology in this case consisted of passing a ship traveling at c/null singularity perpendicularly through the margins of the string's

  's field. Thus, at greatest mass, we were able to demonstrate a perturbation in the amplitude of the string's wave.

  While it doesn't sound like much, for the first time we have been able to measure a human effect on the Forbidden Borders.

  Our theoreticians are studying ways whereby we can augment this effect. it may be possible to send two vessels generating artificial gravity in opposite directions through the field. In doing so, we may be able to initiate enough interaction to induce initial conditions which might lead to a disruption of the Bordersperhaps enough so that we could slip a ship through the gap without destroying it.

  Lord Commander, you must be aware, however, of the energy necessary to accomplish this. I am not sure, at this time, that we can accelerate enough mass to light speed and coordinate it with enough accuracy to accomplish our goal-even with virtual pair control capabilities from the Countermeasures system.

  That said, I offer you my best wishes and inform you that I remain dedicated to the task you have set me and will exhaust every possible avenue of inquiry.

  Sinklar waited beside Staffa and continued to stare into the square hole he'd excavated so long ago into the forbidding stone of Markata. In daylight, it still appeared ominous-a brooding wound in the side of the mountain. To his surprise, however, green shoots had taken hold in the tailings. A healing, even here among the cuttings and mucking mud.

  The Targan sky alternated between patches of enamel blue and puffy white clouds. For the moment, bright sunlight bathed them, the pines verdant, the spring grass waving. Had they really fought here beneath this peaceful landscape? The morning had dawned warm and moist. A day for picnics and lovers-not for resurrecting the dead.

  Around them, the rest of their team continued to gather, including STU

  personnel with comm equipment and other instruments. Sinklar recognized geophones dangling from coils of black wire.

  . "Let's do it." Sinklar took a final breath of fresh morning air, dreading the thought of breathing mold that spored off corpses.

  :'You don't sound very anxious."' 'You don't either. "

  Staffa gave him a weary look. "You and I will have to face both of our demons in there. Fortunately, most of yours are dead."

  Sinklar slapped his father on the shoulder. "And yours are just electronic."

  They had decided to enter Sinklar's old adit that Mac and his people had taken with such confidence. For one thing, the entrance lay within their compound.

  For another, the bore was considerably wider than the "renegade hole," the escape tunnel the Seddi had drilled out during the fighting.

  Entering from this high gallery meant they would have to travel extra distance to reach the Mag Comm's chamber and the archives. All of that would be through blasted corridors and galleries. The advantage was that mining equipment could follow the route and remove any of the artifacts they might want to salvage from the archives. After the route was cleared, they could ride back and forth to the stairway that led down to the Mag Comm's chamber.

  Sinklar glanced behind them where the mining technicians were making last minute adjustments to their equipment. Their job would be to check for structural stability, fall rock, and other underground dangers. More Targan miners would be flying in later in the day to begin the unpleasant task of removing the corpses.

  You could beg off, Sinklar told himself. Wait until they move the bodies . . .

  bring them out and bury them.

  Staffa smacked a gloved fist into his palm. "Yes, let's g
et on with it." He squinted in the sunlight, the jeweled hair clip over his left ear scintillating as the wind teased his black hair. "Ryman? Have you got the helmet interface?"

  "Here, Lord Commander. " Ryman Ark stepped forward, a sialon case under one arm.

  Sinklar shuffled from foot to foot, aware of the other STU who had placed herself behind him. Adze was the woman's name. Through the clutter of electronics gear, Sinklar could tell that she had copper-tinted skin and a pair of the hardest black eyes he'd ever seen.

  One of the technicians appeared out of the tunnel, his coveralls smeared with dust. He looked on the verge of being sick. "It's all right so far, Lord Commander. My people have checked the roof and walls through the upper three levels. So long as you follow the beacons, nothing's going to come down on top of you. But, well, it's not pretty in there." As if to himself, he added, "I'm not going to sleep so well for a while."

  "War tends to be that way. We've got a crew coming in to clean up."

  The miner glanced at Sinklar, nodding, respect in his eyes. "Good to have you back on the planet, Lord Fist." "Good to be here, sir."

  The fellow seemed to brighten. "I saw you once in Vespa. That was just after you'd whipped five of Tybalt's Divisions. My cousin was working out at the Raktan mines when Hauws destroyed Weebouw and the Third Ashtan. He said he never saw such a defeated bunch of bastards as that Third Ashtan. "

  Hauws had died during the Raktan fight. Would Targa mean nothing more to him than a list of places where he'd lost friends? "When the burial crews get here, I would appreciate it if you would keep track of them. Remember that the bodies in there . . . well, they're all heroes. "

  The miner nodded somberly, raising a hand to touch his forelock. "Aye, Lord Fist. It'll be done. Be sure, I'll break the back of any lout who makes a disrespectful move, sir. "

  Sinklar smiled, shaking the man's hand. "I'm sure you will." Then he turned to Staffa, taking a final breath of the pine-scented air. "Lord Commander, I'm as ready as I'll ever be. "

  Sinklar started down the incline, glancing uneasily at the walls. Here, they'd been blasted, sealed as the last of his troops evacuated. Crews had cleaned out the adit upon their arrival, and now Sinklar walked on smooth rock, the walls straight and square again. The comm cable still lay on the floor-once his only link with Staffa kar Therma. Now the man walked quietly at his side as the darkness grew and their suit lights automatically illuminated to shoot white light into blackness. Overhead, the light bars his people had strung still hung, dark-like all the aspirations they'd had in Makarta.

  The first body consisted of nothing more than a skeleton in charred armor.

  Staffa studied the corpse. "Scavengers came this far. The reports I got state that most of the fatalities near the entrance were picked clean." He paused.

  "I remember her. She came around the corner . . . and I shot her. Instinctive reaction. "

  Sinklar nodded, a fluttery sensation in his stomach. "This is going to be harder on us than I thought."

  They stepped out into a narrow winding tunnel that dipped to the right and rose to the left. The mining machine that had made the adit had proceeded straight across and ctit a curve.

  "Mac went down there." Staffa pointed. "We'd walled off the exits. If any of Mac's people had touched them, they'd have felt wet plaster. Some of the walls weren't more than a half inch thick."

  "Must have worked in a hurry. Your Seddi must have shown considerable discipline." Mac, I'm so sorry. Sinklar's pain grew as he stared down into the blackness, trying to imagine how Mac and his people must have felt.

  "They were so frightened they almost fouled themselves. Staffa stepped across to the curving wall as he followed the amber beacons placed by the mining engineers, and rounded the radius before stepping into an open cavern. Here, an occasional light cast its radiance down from above. Wreckage had been strewn everywhere, and giant slabs of rock had fallen from the arched roof to smash whatever lay below. The amber beacons traced a sinuous trail across the cavern, sometimes placed on mounds of piled roof fall.

  "This used to be the study center." Staffa looked around, hands on hips. "We mined it, then lured one of your Sections in here."

  Sinklar's mouth had gone dry. Looking around, he spotted armored legs protruding from beneath a heavy desk. Whose? Don't ask, Sinklar. Unable to speak, he followed Staffa as the big man picked his way through the shambles.

  Amidst the broken equipment, Sinklar noticed an occasional shadowed corpse, or, more often, a fragment of a human body. Dust had settled over the whole, and most of the corpses had desiccated to skin and bone, the eye sockets empty and gaping. Above, the roof looked either splintered or polished depending on how the concussion had struck.

  Sinklar glanced back, watching as their party crossed the cavern, single file, positions marked by white beams of suit lights. They created a weird human snake winding through the darkness while the sunken eyes of the ghosts watched.

  The next cavern appeared even worse. "This used to be the distillery," Staffa said. "Your people broke through just back of that wall there." He pointed to an oblong hole in the far wall.

  Sinklar nodded, his sense of horror growing. The floor here was littered with fragments of crockery and glass that crunched underfoot. Boulders, as much as a meter in diameter, had fallen from gaping holes in the blackened ceiling.

  Shattered rock had cascaded everywhere. The suit lights created a macabre dance of shadows and beams as they started across, eddies of dust rising in the eerie light.

  A grim-faced Adze followed directly behind Sink while the rest of the STU

  proceeded warily, weapons gripped tightly as they studied every nook and cranny. More than one glanced nervously at the treacherous ceiling.

  They're always on the alert, never taking anything for granted.

  The air in the distillery still held the pungent odor of sour mash and fermentation mixed with the musty tang of dust. Sinklar stepped warily around a dusty bowl-and almost tripped as he shied backward.

  The bowl had patches of hair still clinging to it. Strong hands steadied him from behind.

  "All right, sir? "

  "Yeah, thanks, Adze. Don't step on the skull here." "Yes, sir. "

  Sinklar got his pulse to slow and moved carefully around the gruesome head.

  Step by step, he crunched his way across the glinting bottle fragments, passing the twisted shapes of the fermentation vats, each crumpled like so much paper from the concussion.

  "I wouldn't have wanted to be in here, " Sinklar whis pered. But I sent them . . . and they went.

  "Me, either," Adze muttered behind him. "Hell of a fight, sir. "

  "Good people. Brave." Sinklar ground his teeth, hating to have to reach up and rub a tear away with a knuckle. Staffa had stepped through a low arch. Sinklar almost

  breathed a sigh of relief to see the floor slanting down to the right.

  "This intersection takes us down to Level Three." He glanced at Sinklar, seeing his shiny eyes reflected in the suit lights. "Are you all right?"

  "Yeah. " An aching knot had formed under Sinklar's throat. It threatened to choke him as they started down toward a faint glow. Had the lights survived there?

  Sinklar shook his head, trying to rid himself of the images. Bright-eyed troops watched him from the shadows, chanting, SINKLAR! SINKLAR! SINKLAR!

  as they had every time he'd saved them from destruction.

  I ordered them down here to die. He gasped, despite himself. I did this to them. They . . . trusted me.

  Here, at this bottleneck, the battle had been pressed vigorously. Corpses lay piled in heaps, the dead curiously interwoven with Regans in hardened and charred armor embracing Seddi in their rot-stained robes.

  Could these twisted, mold-coated mummies have been people? Were these same remains related to the human beings that laughed, hoped, and cried? Did the gleaming eyes I once stared into become these empty sockets? Could these shrunken caricatures have been alive once? He blinke
d, stuck between memory and reality.

  "Blessed Gods," Sinklar whispered. "Kitmon's Section. "

  "They fought like Etarian tigers," Staffa told him bluntly. "These used to be the Novice quarters."

  Sinklar had slowed, picking his way between the sprawled bodies, slowly shaking his head. Memories of the insanity of those last hours lingered in his mind.

  "I went crazy . . . so crazy. Ordered assault after assault to break you. To save Mac. Trapped . . . I was as trapped out there as you were in here. I couldn't . . . couldn't

  He closed his eyes, stumbling over a brittle torso.

  Adze caug.ht him, holding him up as he bit his lip, physical pain easing the hurt in his soul.

  Yes, insane. Desperate and helpless, with his friends caged in this pus-dripping rock. Goaded to fury by Gretta's death, driven by the guilt of allowing Gretta's assassin to go free. So much misery. Misery here, in this horrible place. He picked his way among the dead, friends he'd loved and cherished. Condemned through his own arrogance.

  They trusted me . . . trusted . . . THEYRE DEAD, SINKLAR. You wASTED

  THEM! WASTED - . . DEAD . . . TR US TED YO U. . . . He slumped then, knees buckling, hardly aware of Adze struggling to support him.

  "It's all right, " Staffa's firm voice penetrated the fog of guilt. A second strong arm went round him, to counterbalance Adze's.

  'Is he ... Should I evacuate him, Lord Commander?" Adze asked.

  "No. Help me keep him moving. He's just hurting, hurting and healing."

  They led him forward, ever downward, into the shine of white lights, all obscured by the silver wash of tears Sinklar Fist couldn't stop.

  Staffa tightened his grip as he led Sinklar through the carnage. Even his stomach, inured to such things, lurched at the destruction, all too well preserved.

  Staffa herded Sinklar to one side and settled him at a darkened comm monitor.

  Adze crossed her arms and stepped back, on guard.