Copyright 1992 by Jim Vassilakos
                      All Rights Reserved

     Permission is granted by the copyright holder to copy
      and distribute this work such that no commercial or
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---------------------------------------------------------------



                          Twenty-three



She stood there, her back to the wall, pressing a switch on the
small, yellow holographic recorder and dropping it to the soft,
mauve carpet. Somewhere within its crystalline memory, she could
imagine it etching his likeness, his bewildered stare breaking
beneath fluttering eyelids, his jittering accented by sharp
grunts and breathless gasps. Alister and Korina switched
positions, their hands circling slowly upon his skull. Then his
convulsions began, sweat pouring along his bony chest as icy
blades of pale hue dodged among his ribs and face. The jagged
moonlight lent the trio an ethereal appearance, and Sule, with
stolid patience, forced for her eyes to compensate, until the
darkness crept back to the corners of the chamber, shadows now
striking the carpet as dim, hazy ghosts, and the dim purple
night, blooming into a robust rouge with alternating shades of
crimson and lavender. Finally, he screamed, his once hollow voice
suddenly granular and piercing. Alister turned about, visibly
shaken from the work he'd performed, albeit, under duress.
   "Your people did quite a job."
   "We prepared him to your specifications."
   Alister grimaced and nodded, soft white hair reflecting the
light of the moon.
   "Of that, I am sure. Whoever operates your mind scanner should
either be pinned with a medal or shot... depending, of course, on
one's point of view."
   "You disapprove?"
   "His resistance was carved to pieces, Sule... a most eccentric
pattern and more than a tad over-zealous, but that's just a
personal opinion."
   She raised her eyebrows mockingly, "Did it make your job
difficult, Alister?"
   "On the contrary. We had merely to separate the remains, fold
them back into nice, little pockets and then tie."
   "Tightly, I hope."
   She knew enough about psychic knots, at least in theory.
Usually fashioned by powerful Siri, they'd been described in the
literature as flexible decision arrangements, curving a subject's
resistance into a series of winding mental rings, one upon the
other. Straining hopelessly, they would eventually collapse under
their own tension. But they would not break, like the more rigid
approaches. That was the key to their ancient success.
   Sule had never before seen the method practiced except in
hologram videos, but then again, she never before had a subject
of such remarkable will. Despite being primed with the scanner,
Erestyl's resolve had remained true, a rarity to put things
mildly. Pealing his mind electronically had ultimately posed too
great a risk. Only a psyche of the most extraordinary talent and
skill could effect the task.
   Alister was the best on-planet, perhaps the best in the entire
region of space. Unfortunately, he was also an enemy. Sule lifted
Erestyl back to his knees by his sparse hair, pulling him away
from the Ariens. It seemed to be a direction in which he was
happy to migrate.
   "I trust his mind is undamaged?"
   "Underneath the scars, a great deal has healed already... I
suspect with the aid of another psi."
   "Harrison's assistant?"
   Alister nodded, "Without doubt."
   "How far did she invade?"
   "Beyond the surface, though what she got for it is another
matter. She helped him sort out the remnants of his memories, I
suspect, but in the state he must have been... well... I doubt it
would have made any sense to her. Nonetheless, his shell is
presently useless. He'll tell you anything you want to know, and
all you have to do is speak his name."
   She dropped Erestyl and approached the old man, stepping to
the point where she could bite off his nose if she so desired.
   "If you even tried to program him, I'll know."
   "I have pushed upon his mind only the one suggestion, Sule,
that he should trust you by the recognition of his name. That is
all. You have my oath."
   "Very well. Leave us."
   The two psyches complied, departing via the chamber's only
doorway. Sule watched them go, pacing slowly around her subject
only after they had left and she had checked the room for bugs.
There were none. Of that she was not surprised. The Ariens had no
need of such devices. No need, that was, unless their visitors
came well prepared. She switched on her psionic dispersion gizmo,
optimizing its field to a ten meter radius, more than enough
space for a private interrogation. Erestyl, meanwhile, stayed
perfectly still, watching her from the corner of his eyes, a
quiet sense of desperation forming among the crevices of his
tattered face.
   "Sule?"
   "Yes... it is I, Erestyl."
   His fear dissipated with incalculable ease, and a warm smile
embraced his lips.
   "It's so good to see you, Sule."
   "I know Erestyl. I know."


                          *     *     *


Bernie expected to see Hunter in sickbay. Instead, one of the
staffers manned the front office. He was a heavyset man with a
greying beard and a stern, dour expression, his eyes seemingly
bloodshot by annoyance.
   "Yes?"
   "Anders told me you guys needed a camera?"
   The man accepted the tripod without a word of thanks,
unfolding it in front of the beds in the visitor chamber. The
four corpses laid there as they died, their mouths gaping open,
eyes staring into vacant space, with not so much as a single bed
sheet between them. To see the captain like that was bad enough.
He'd known and respected the man for years, Dunham's time in the
Imperial Navy before his transfer to royal fleet being somewhat
the stuff of local legend. The commodore, on the other hand, was
another matter entirely. Here was a noble woman, an Imperial
ambassador not to mention a company stockholder, twice decorated
by the Grand Duke himself, her family name renowned and respected
throughout the entire sector. And here she was. Dead. Stone cold
dead. Bernie felt himself grow ill, stepping back toward the door
with heart in hand.
   "Umm... I'd better get back."
   There was no response. There was really nothing to say. One of
the maintenance workers stood idly by the lift doors as he
returned, brown pants smudged by what looked like spaghetti sauce
and a grey polymer power-wrench dangling from loose fingers. He
rubbed his dirty brown hair with his free hand and smiled as
Bernie entered the lift.
   "Where ya going, Bernard?" came the strange voice.
   "Do I know you?"
   He pulled a gun, "You do now."


                          *     *     *


Arch studied the densitometer reading, then looked back at the
electrostatigram, his thick beard flopping from one side of his
face to the other as he turned his head.
   "This isn't going to work, is it?"
   Cooper shook sideways, then thought about it some more. The
safe was well protected, but nothing was untouchable,
particularly with half the ship's engineering staff hovering over
the problem.
   "We can use a conductive drill bit."
   Arch winced, "It'll create too much vibration. Same problem
with sonics, and polymer will break the circuit."
   "Only if it hits the mesh."
   "Look, Cooper. I really don't want to mess around with these
people. This is ISIS we're talking about. We need something
powerful but subtle, okay?"
   She shut-up for awhile. Then something weird jumped to mind.
   "Molecular acid."
   He laughed, "You're insane. You know that?"
   "Run a base current through it. I assume they allow a safety
period for the IFP. We can monitor and switch before it expires."
   Arch laughed, "The heat alone will destroy everything inside."
   "We can contain it with a gravitic sequencer. We can make it
as fine as any drill bit, and we can inject liquid nitrogen to
control the thermal build-up."
   Arch stopped laughing. It sounded almost plausible.
   "What if it detects the gravitics? A densitometer scan is one
thing, but for all we know, a gravitic sequencer could set the
damn thing off."
   She frowned, "I never said it was perfect. How likely are they
to have a gravitics detector?"
   "You willing to bet your life they don't?"
   She studied the readings again. No, she wasn't, but she wasn't
willing to be stopped cold either, especially not after what
happened to Erik.
   "Can we fool it into thinking it's just being scanned?
Repeatedly?"
   Arch shrugged, "I don't know about that. It sounds risky."
   Lieutenant Anders marched in while they were bouncing the idea
off the senior techs. Most of them were experts in their
particular field, but had little to no experience dealing with
this sort of problem. One of them finally voiced the question all
of them must have been thinking about.
   "Why can't we just bring in some specialists to handle this?"
   "Because we can't." It was Anders who replied, his voice
steady if unconvincing.
   "That's one heck of an answer, Lieutenant."
   "Brooks wants the safe opened. Time is an issue."
   Arch smiled, lumbering forward rather awkwardly as though he
was overdue for one of him infamous fresher breaks, the sort
where he would end up sitting on the can for hours just thinking
about some way to fix something or make something else work
better.
   "Lives are also an issue, Lieutenant. We do this wrong, and we
could be in for some grief."
   "Just do it. Minimize the risk if you can, but get the job
done ASAP. I have to go to sickbay and then to the shuttle
concourse, but Brooks is going to want some resolution to this by
the time I return. Can you just stop plodding around and do
something?"
   "I dunno. We'll think about it."
   The others laughed, and Anders left in a huff, marching off
and grumbling something about disrespect. He couldn't say a whole
lot. Arch outranked him by a light year. Still, Brooks could be a
problem.


                          *     *     *


"...all aware, even those among you who have never seen war, the
death of a commanding officer is not an easy thing to cope with,
much less look at, unflinchingly. However, I feel it only fair to
show you what you're up against. Because, if any of you find this
Mr. Harrison or any of his fellow assassins during the course of
our search, I want you know a few things well in advance. I want
you to know what he did. I want you to know what he is capable of
doing, not only to you, but to the passengers and to your crew
mates. I want you to know how very desperate and dangerous he is.
If you hesitate, even for a fraction of a moment, you may be
sacrificing not only your own life, but the lives of those with
whom you serve. I expect that... given Mr. Harrison's past
actions... it is almost certain that the application of lethal
force will be necessary in order to apprehend him. I know that
many of you have never killed anyone before, but today, you might
have to. And I want to show you exactly why you might have to."
   *Beep*
   Brooks hit the mute switch and opened a new line.
   "Damnit, Anders. I'm in the middle of giving a speech here."
   "Sir, Arch isn't cooperating."
   "Fine, I'll take care of it."
   He closed the frequency and pushed another button. Everyone in
the main auditorium gasped in unison as the corpses were
displayed on the large screen. Then he opened a channel to
engineering.
   "Engineering section."
   "This is Brooks. Route me through to Arch."
   "Aye sir."
   "...Comm man, movin' vroomers."
   "Brooks. Get me Arch."
   He waited a moment, then the engineer's jolly voice cut across
the line.
   "Hey, I like this voice-only concept. Tabor hasn't figured out
how to get the internals up yet?"
   "He's working on it. Look, Arch. I need Torin's safe open."
   "Yeah, we're thinking about it."
   "I need it open now. Real bad."
   "I'd like to help you out, my friend, but between this,
engineering, and the search, I'm on a skeleton staff here."
   Brooks looked back at his monitor. Some of the crew had
already broken down, others refusing to look at the screen. For
the first time, he started to wonder if this was such a good
idea.
   "Arch, just listen to me, okay? I'm about to send over two
thirds of the crew on a head hunt... and I don't know a thing
about this Harrison guy other than what just happened. Hunter
seemed to think the commodore wanted him alive, that he knew
something of importance. Once I send these folks out, he's not
going to be alive for very long. That's for damn sure."
   "So don't send them out. Snag him when he tries to leave."
   "And hope he doesn't slip though like he did on Calanna?"
Brooks shook his head, glancing again at the crew. He could see
their anger rising once grief sputtered out. Many of those who
had been looking down finally pushed their chins up, eyes
unflinching from what they saw, and in the quiet moments which
followed, scowls of determination descended across their faces
like masks, each different, yet each very much the same.
   "Just open the damn safe, Arch."
   "There's a risk..."
   "To hell with the risk. You want me to come down there and do
it myself?"
   He cut the line before the chief engineer could forge a reply,
then hit the mute again.
   "I know that many of you probably hate me for making you look
at this sight. No matter. It was necessary that you see this. It
was necessary that you know exactly who this Mr. Harrison is so
that your resolve to carry out this search with the utmost
thoroughness is done right the first time. Sometime during the
next several hours, a few of you will be in a position to either
kill or be killed. Of that I am certain. How you react, however,
is entirely up to you. Each of you will be outfitted with
firearms, but I can't be there to pull the trigger for you, and
we simply don't have the manpower to conduct this search with the
security staff alone. I need your help. All that I ask is that
you look at these fine officers, these murdered officers, and
that you decide here and now whether or not you can carry out
this duty. Those of you who cannot... you may leave now. Please
confine yourselves to quarters."
   Predictably, very few left the auditorium. Brooks studied the
list of those who remained. Most of them were cooks, shop clerks,
rovers, maintenance personnel, engineers, everything but
combatants. He organized it by rank with the push of a function
key, attaching at least one security person to each officer and
then tacking on several enlisted personnel. The general idea was
to piece people together with their supervisors, officers they
already knew, keeping the techies handy for special purpose
teams.
   "Okay. Lieutenant Senthil, you will return to the armory and
await instructions. Ensign Lascano, you will group at main
engineering, forward power terminals, with Crewman Eller, Crewman
Vorst, Chief Poula, Crewman Samuel Niles, and Crewman Theis. You
will take the lifts off the power grid and then await further
instructions. Lieutenant Carpenter, you will group at the
observation deck with Crewman Peters, Crewman Evans, Crewman..."


                          *     *     *


"All those people..."
   His dazed eyes seemed ready to drop from their sockets, short,
shallow gasps of breath fracturing his hoarse whispers.
   "We had no true grasp... we were as children playing with
fire... no concept of our idiocy or the consequences of our
actions..."
   His whispers trailed off, finally blending with the light
gusts of wind whisking at the edges of the curtains. Then his
head dipped, and he just kept moving his lips, as though he
didn't really care how he looked or whether or not anyone could
hear his voice. She lifted him by his bony arms and sat him
against a corner of the room, propping his head against the
intersection of the two walls, and then kneeling to where they
could see each other eye to eye. "Use the name," she thought,
"while it still has power over him."
   "Erestyl."
   It got his attention, if nothing else, his silent murmurs
halting with the utmost haste as a clear string of drool slipped
over his bottom lip and down his chin.
   "I'm tired, Sule."
   "Stay awake for now. Tell me what happened after the...
accident."
   He blinked his eyes, as though accessing some data storage
drive deep in his brain. Then a scowl crossed his lips, until
they shuddered with anger.
   "It was no accident."
   "You had no way of knowing."
   "Clio's equations told us everything. We simply discounted
most of what they said."
   "Why?"
   His eyes twinkled for a moment, memories tumbling behind.
   "Clio wrote them. She's... well... she's smart but a little
too imaginative sometimes... or so we'd all thought. Her
equations were extremely suspect, due to content as much as her
reputation. In their original form, they were obviously
incorrect. In order to make them agree with even the most basic
logical axioms, we were forced to... improvise."
   "Improvise?"
   He nodded, more with his eyes than his head.
   "Clio imagined ghost particles... particles which don't exist
or, at least, which were never observed... which could not be
observed due to certain peculiar characteristics."
   "Such as?"
   "She thought they would appear and then disappear within a
fraction of stighmi-time... coming from and going to nowhere and
then doing so over and over, forming loops in imaginary time,
rotating gravitational vectors, performing a variety of chores
which provide the gravitational phenomenon."
   "And you didn't believe her."
   "The spontaneous birth of a sub-quantum particle and then its
vanishing right into mathematical oblivion? No... none of us
believed her. We laughed. She wanted to re-vamp grand-unification
and put ghosts up on pedestals, make them central to the theory
on space-time. She endowed them with the characteristic of time-
travel. Time-travel, of all things. Not only would it demand an
overhaul of grand-unification, but we'd have to drastically
revise the theory on time itself. Drastically. From top to
bottom. Inside out. Of course we didn't buy it. We couldn't buy
it. Nobody has that kind of loose change."
   "Then what made you test it?"
   He shrugged, "Despite the ghost particles, there were parts of
her theory which had merit. We thought we might be able to invert
a gravitic field. We tested the device on a large iron-core world
and did generate some measurable earthquakes. What we needed next
was something with a large mass. A very large mass."
   "A star."
   The string of drool slipped from his chin and onto his lap. He
didn't seem to notice.
   "Clio argued against it. Right from the very start, she saw
the consequences."
   "The halo?"
   "She saw parallels between the gravitic and electromagnetic
field equations. According to the revised theory, as mass rose
toward infinity, the gravitic matrix would increase its
intensity, eventually matching the electromagnetic, loop for
loop, rotation for rotation."
   "And that scared her."
   "Of course it scared her. A spoonful of electronics can erect
a palpable electromagnetic force. With gravity, a mass as great
as a whole planet's is required just to pull a leaf from a tree.
The dissimilarity in magnitude is absolutely beyond human
comprehension, something on the order of a million-trillion-
trillion-trillion times. It gives me headaches just trying to
devise an illustrative analogy."
   "I'm sure."
   "And the problems it creates for anyone trying to reconcile
the two forces... that's the kicker. That's why modern grand
unification is such a joke. Clio had a fit when she found out
where we were planning on conducting the test."
   "Galen?"
   "A perfect star. Do you know how hard it is to find a perfect
star? How could we measure quakes on any other? The only problem
was that it resided at the center of a populated system. She
demanded that we stop, and went berserk when Tobie told her to
get lost."
   "Berserk?"
   "She tried to destroy our prototype, right in front of
everyone. Like we wouldn't notice or wouldn't care. I'm smashing
it. You can't stop me. It was my idea in the first place. She
was... berserk. Completely irrational. As loony as a toon. No
nice way to say it."
   "So Tobie had her locked up."
   He sighed, "Her outburst had only served to spook the reps
from the institute. They were making noises about yanking our
funds, like that would really stop us, but Tobie was scared. The
project was her responsibility. So she convinced them that Clio
was a whacko, which wasn't too hard after what happened. She said
there was absolutely no danger. No danger at all."
   "And the staff supported her?"
   "Some of us were having misgivings, but we knew that we'd be
axed if we'd admitted it."
   Sule smirked. Fear was the simplest means of control in
humans. It over-powered its compliment, hope, by many orders of
magnitude, perhaps a good "illustrative analogy" for Erestyl.
   "So you went ahead, and the Halo of Prometheus was born. Why
did you and Clio survive?"
   "Tobie sent me back to Galen to keep an eye on Clio. She was
effectively in my personal custody. After her sedation wore off,
we monitored the labship from the orbital complex. She was
utterly calm, as though she didn't care anymore. Then we lost
contact with the labship, just as she predicted. They must have
vaporized before they realized what was happening. Clio figured
that we still had a few minutes to find shelter, if I was finally
of the opinion that she was right. So... we scrambled into the
shuttle and ducked behind the shadow of Galen's closest moon. Not
too complex a plan for even us scientists. From there we could
see the planet's upper atmosphere ionizing beneath the wake of
the halo. We cruised by for a closer look about a day later,
after the plasma fires had burnt out. The landscape was scorched
to the bedrock. Where there once stood cities, there were only
pools of molten iron and plastic fumes and layers upon layers of
carbon dust."
   Sule nodded, "I've seen it," neglecting to add that she
thought it a beautiful sight.
   "I was in a daze. If not for Clio, I think that I would have
just sat there and let it kill me. But then she said something
strange. She said that what we'd seen was a small one. Those were
her exact words. A small one. She said that with a more refined
matrix, the halo would move through space at something close to
the speed of light... that it wouldn't be detected until it was
too late and that no fleet within ten trillion kilometers would
be able to withstand its force. She knew that they'd use it as a
weapon. That was her very first thought. The planets would be
ravaged, everything from icy comets to gassy giants and all the
little worlds in between. Utter and complete destruction, Sule,
on a scale entirely unfathomed. She knew it; right off the bat,
she knew. And then she cried and said something about wishing
she'd become a watchmaker."
   "So you took it upon yourselves to save society."
   "We returned to the institute... erased our records, destroyed
the backups, melted the second prototype in a vat of molecular
acid. Our sponsors were understandably miffed. Years of work,
millions of credits in hardware, all chucked right into a black
hole for what they were concerned."
   "Except that it wasn't."
   His eyes turned toward the ceiling, a trickle of blood
starting again from one nostril.
   "Gone. Forever gone, Sule."
   "Do we have to start this again, Erestyl?"
   He shut his eyes, fighting it like he'd done before when she
had to break his concentration with a swat to the nose. This time
she tried a different tactic, edging closer to his withered body
and holding it in her arms. She pressed her lips against his ear,
and then ran them along his pasty cheek, down to the drool still
forming along his lips.
   "Don't hold back from me, Erestyl. You can trust me."
   *Beep*
   Hunter looked up from the holo-player's display before
realizing where the sound was coming from. Then she raised the
volume as Sule released her embrace, standing up and snatching
the communicator off her belt.
   "Vlep, your timing leaves something to be desired."
   "The quarry, Sule. He is close."
   "Harrison? You're certain?"
   "Positive."
   "Understood. Keep your eyes peeled and call me if you see
him."
   She reattached the communicator to her belt and knelt back
down. Erestyl regarded her with a confused stare.
   "Michael?"
   "You know him?"
   "Michael is a friend."
   She grimaced, "You've got his psyche's memories floating
around in there between your own. You know that Erestyl?"
   "He is my friend."
   "He's my friend too," Sule lied, in a voice dripping with
insincerity. Then added, in all honesty, "I can hardly wait to
see him again."


                          *     *     *


"What took you?"
   Johanes smiled, "Can I help it if all the lifts freeze up?
Bernard, I'd like you to meet my associate. If you so much as
sneeze, he'll burn a hole in your back the size of the Stravik
Nebula."
   Spokes nodded, the iridium laser fitting snugly in one hand, a
tangerine colored sluice stick in the other.
   "Uh... they were closing down the Icy Works," he offered by
way of explanation. Then he took a sip. Johanes watched him with
a sudden craving.
   "What flavor?"
   "Citrus blend."
   "Didn't you get me one?"
   "I was out of change... sorry."
   Johanes tried not to look too disappointed.
   "C'mon Bernard. Don't mess up now. He gets trigger happy when
he's had too much sugar."
   The guards outside comm-hardware didn't seem too happy about
the lack of identification. Four of them stood, imperturbable in
their ballistic jackets, stony-faced and full of self-importance.
They seemed more like mummified manikins on an ego-trip than real
people, though the reason probably had more to do with firepower
than personality. Somebody had outfitted them with submachine
guns, very serious weaponry for a passenger liner. Between the
armor and armament, they comprised a veritable army, and they
knew it. But with nearly all pictures, there were problems, lack
of training and combustibility of ballistic cloth being just two.
Only the fifth guard seemed even remotely aware of their true
situation. She wore an almost vulnerable expression. Luckily, her
response was more or less predictable.
   "You lost it in the laundry?"
   "Yeah. Bernard can testify for me."
   "It's okay. He's with me."
   The chief stepped aside, her dark eyes registering a strange
mixture of animosity and resignation.
   "Just make it quick."
   Once inside, Bernie obediently keyed open the cabinet which
held the shouter. The device was even bigger than Cecil's
multiwave and must have massed a good thirty kilos with the
battery. Johanes shook his head, considering the problem.
   "I'm supposed to carry this?"
   "There are grav trays in the back room."
   Jo motioned him with the gun.
   "Mind if I steal a donut?"
   "Go ahead. You're stealing everything else."
   "Thanks. Oh, after you help me get this set up right, I'm
going to need some duct tape."
   "What for?"
   "You."
   Outside, Chief Yim was getting edgy. She paced the hall,
walking over to the passage junction where a maintenance worker
seemed to be fiddling with one of the lights. It had been
flickering since she'd arrived on duty, and for some strange
reason, he had nothing better to do than reach up and punch it
with the white ends of his knuckles. He was tall, his lanky frame
tilting backward as he unscrewed the face place and poked an
explorative finger inside.
   "Hmmm..."
   "Having a problem?"
   Spokes looked toward the woman, offering her the long
transparent plate with one hand. She glanced at it and snorted as
though it were some sort of joke.
   "You want me to hold this?"
   "If you don't mind. I have to yank this unit out."
   "What you gonna replace it with?"
   "I'm not going to replace it. I'm going to fix it."
   "Uh huh... you know that this area is restricted? Who sent you
down here?"
   "Nobody. I'm just doing rounds."
   "Show me some ID."
   A loud bang swept through the corridor, its force rattling the
entire deck and wobbling the long, tubular bulbs back and forth
in their sockets. One of them fell and splintered against the
deck, sharp shards of glass scattering over her combat boots.
   "What in blazes," Yim tugged the communicator off her belt,
switching it to channel one. Everyone seemed to be talking at
once, and Brooks was hollering for quiet somewhere in the
signal's background. She stuck it on her belt, leaving it on low
volume. Johanes emerged a moment later with his tray of goodies,
his expression of utter bewilderment complete as could be.
   "What the hell was that?"
   "Sounded like an explosion."
   "I better get these up to the bridge."
   "Hold it. There could be a hull breach. Stay put until we
figure out what happened. Thom, check to see if Bernie has any
ideas on what that was."
   "Aye aye, chief." The guard disappeared through the entrance
for a moment, and then stuck his head back out, looking toward
the Draconian with a confused stare.
   "Where is he?"
   "In the storage room."
   "It's locked."
   Johanes nudged the grav tray back inside, the chief at his
back, and tried to make a convincing show of banging his fist
against the door.
   "Bernie?! Open up! I don't get it. Maybe it got shorted out or
something." Yim and Thom didn't look terribly convinced, and
Johanes cracked a wide grin, seizing the moment while he still
had their confusion to count on.
   "Hey, I have an idea."
   He pulled the pistol and deposited a slug between Thom's eyes.
The look of surprise was almost comical, a crazy mixture of
disbelief and revelation coating that single final expression
just before the head would snap back and brains go splattering
against the wall. Yim tackled him at once. She was good,
wrenching the gun from his hand as he tried to blow her face off.
Meanwhile, screams and the smell of charred flesh wafted in from
the corridor. Johanes grinned, suspecting he could overpower her.
Then he felt her knee in his groin, the grin melting off his
face.
   "That hurt."
   One hand clenched her throat, the other keeping her gun barrel
away from his face. She bounced several bullets off the floor,
one ricocheting into this shoulder, before he twisted her
sideways and off-balance. Suddenly, Spokes was in the doorway. He
stood there, taking his sweet time and aiming for the best shot
he could get. A split second later, he lay on his back in a pool
of blood. It was a clean shot, right through the temple, and
within a fraction of a second, the gun was turned toward him.
   Johanes managed to peal his one last hope from a shin holster.
It was a simple plastiknife, able to score steel plate and cut
through raw flesh like warm butter. And best of all, it was
completely undetectable to most scanners. They'd made him
practice drawing it in a number of uncomfortable positions until
whipping it out had become second nature, sort of a game he would
play from time to time just to impress himself. He flashed it
across her throat as she turned, her gun facing him. At first, it
seemed to barely leave a scratch at all, but then, as her arms
fell to either side and she tried to breath, she seemed to notice
that something was terribly amiss. With a sense of impending
doom, her entire head slowly slid off her shoulders and fell,
eyelids still fluttering, onto the cold, hard deck. It was a
simple weapon, just a game until now.
   Johanes lifted himself slowly to his feet, a steady, little
rivulet of blood licking down his arm. One of the guards was
still kicking in the corridor. He staggered about, screaming
about his eyes hurting. Johanes stumbled around the poor wretch,
fully aware of the blinding effects of a wide-arc dispersion.
He'd instructed Spokes on how to use the laser's first shot for
just that very purpose. The others lay about, badly mauled with
pockets of their flesh vaporized, the organs beneath spitting
forth various bodily fluids. They must have shielded their eyes
enough to pose a threat. Either that or Spokes had gotten
trigger-happy. "Too much sugar," Johanes figured, "ought to be
outlawed." Then he remembered his own donut, still sitting half-
eaten on top of the shouter. He switched the device on,
depositing the pastry in a trash chute at the end of the hall.
For some strange reason, he no longer felt much like eating it.
He no longer felt like eating anything.

                          *     *     *


"...just tell me what happened."
   "It's a mess sir."
   "Is Arch there?"
   "In pieces. Cooper and Jenkins are dead too. We have about a
dozen more wounded."
   Brooks scowled, suddenly sick to his stomach, "Okay, just stay
put. Medics are on the way."
   He cut the line and switched to sickbay. The person on duty
informed him that a team had already been organized and was
awaiting instructions. Meanwhile, several search squads were
still calling in to ask what happened. Tabor tried fielding the
flood of calls along the secondary frequencies, finally yanking
off his headset in surprise.
   "Sir, somebody in a maintenance shop is reporting gunfire."
   "Where."
   "Umm... deck seven, somewhere along the starboard aft."
   Brooks consulted his overhead.
   "Send Nguyen's team to check it out. Also, what is Hunter's
channel?"
   "One sec... this is Tabor... yes... that's right, starboard
aft. Um... her comm pings at thirty-one."
   Brooks switched to thirty-one, sending a string of beeps up
the frequency. It finally crackled open after several seconds.
   "This is Hunter."
   "This is Brooks. I need your help."
   "I've been wanting to talk to you. I found something you
should... ztztztztztzt..."
   Brooks tried to reconnect, finally slamming the communicator
against his console.
   "What's going on?!"
   "Everything's jammed. It must be the shouter."
   "Comm-hardware? That's deck seven. That bastard!"


                          *     *     *


If not for the incessant pain in his chest and the sloshy feeling
in his guts, Mike might have ventured back to sleep. As it was,
he had to keep going back and forth to the fresher to vomit what
remained of the morning's miruvor along with the pool of blood
which had managed to seep into his stomach. Cecil would stir from
time to time, offering him something to eat and stroking the cat
as it made its rounds from one corner of the room to another. To
date, his explanations were somewhat less than comprehensive.
   "Shit hit the fan."
   "Obviously. You mind elaborating just a bit?"
   Over the course of several minutes, Mike managed to coax out a
few of the basics: the assassination of the top officers, the
bribery for the Anamesa, the little visit to engineering.
   "What little visit to engineering?"
   "Oh... forget it was ever mentioned. You don't want to know.
Really. It's for the best."
   "For the best?"
   Cecil nodded, his head, not the camera. It made for a fine
show of emphasis.
   "Some things are better left alone. You'll learn that when you
grow up."
   "Do I have to torture your cat or something?"
   "Now Michael..."
   "Just give me a clue and I'll behave. Scout's honor."
   Cecil knew him well enough to know he'd never been a scout.
Nevertheless, the camera struck a whimsical pose, the sort that
told Mike his old friend was on the verge of giving in, if only
for the hate of it.
   "You've killed before, Michael."
   "With good reason."
   "Self-preservation."
   "I've had better reasons than that."
   "Well, so do we." He enunciated each word carefully as though
trying to convey some hidden meaning.
   "What did you guys do?"
   "Every ship has its Achilles' rudder. It's an old proverb."
   Mike shook his head, "Never heard of it."
   "Well, have you ever heard of something called a hyperfield
controller?"
   "What about it?"
   Cecil sighed, and the camera slumped down in despair.
   "That all the clues Cecil has to share."
   "C'mon. What about it?"
   "Leave Cecil alone, now. He's got a date with the interweave
governor."
   "The interweave governor?"
   "Very important date. Must not be late."
   Mike laid back down, finally going back to the fresher after
several minutes had passed. All in all, he was feeling pretty
shitty, but he figured it was better than the alternative.
   "He's dead!"
   Johanes barreled through the door, his shoulder seeping a
steady stream of blood. He tugged in the grav tray behind him and
then collapsed to his knees, panting and raving like a mad man.
   "The idiot! I told him to take his time when he aimed, but not
a fuckin' century!"
   Mike pumped the Draconian's shoulder with a hypo of torogon
regen, then wrapped it with one of the bandages from sickbay.
Johanes just sat there shivering, fading slowly into shock as
Cecil poked his head into the hallway, noting how the path of red
dots led conveniently to their door.
   "We should probably be vacating about now."
   "Why?"
   "He's left a trail of blood. Somewhat fitting, actually."
   Mike poked his head out to look, "C'mon Jo. We're getting out
of here. Now."


           _   /|
           \`o_O'          Jim Vassilakos
             ( )     <---  jimv@ucrmath.ucr.edu
              U            jimv@silver.lcs.mit.edu
           Aachk!

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