"Agreed. Agreed." Colin leaned back with a worried frown. "Dahak?"
"My remotes are only now getting into position, Colin," Dahak's mellow voice replied from thin air. "It is most fortunate Commander Steinberg pursued this line of inquiry. It would never have occurred to me—I have what I believe humans call a blind spot in that I assume that data, once entered, will not subsequently metamorphose—and the Palace's security systems would almost certainly have prevented our orbital scans from detecting anything. Even now—"
He broke off so suddenly Colin blinked.
"Dahak?" There was no response, and his voice sharpened. "Dahak?"
"Colin, I have made a grave error," the computer said abruptly.
"An error?"
"I should not have inserted my remotes so promptly. I fear my scan systems have just activated the bomb."
"The bomb?" Even now Colin hadn't truly believed, not with his emotions, and his face went pale.
"Indeed." The computer's voice seldom showed emotion, but it was bitter now. "I cannot be certain it is the bomb, for I had insufficient time for detailed scans before I was forced to shut down. But there is a device of some sort within the statue—one protected by a Fleet antitampering system."
The humans looked at one another in stunned silence, and then Ninhursag cleared her throat.
"What... what sort of system, Dahak?"
"A Mark Ninety, multi-threat remote weapon system sensor," the computer said flatly. "My scan activated it, but it would appear I was able to shut down before it reached second-stage initiation. It is now armed, however. Any attempt to approach with additional scan systems or with anything which its systems might construe as a threat, will, in all probability, result in the device's immediate detonation."
" 'Tanni! 'Tanni, wake up!"
Jiltanith sat up as quickly as her pregnant condition allowed, and the shaking hand released her. She rubbed her eyes and stared at her father, and the ghosts of sleep fled as his expression registered.
"Father? What passeth?"
"They think they've found the bomb," he said grimly. Her eyes flew wide, and his mouth twisted. "It's under the Palace, 'Tanni—hidden inside the Narhani's statue."
"Jesu!" Her eyes narrowed. There'd been a time when she'd personally managed Nergal's Terra-born intelligence net against Anu, and she hadn't lost the habits of thought that had engendered. " 'Tis a ploy most shrewd," she murmured now. "Should it be discovered, as, indeed, 'twould seem it hath, then would all assume 'twas the Narhani concealed it there."
"That's what we think," Horus agreed, but his voice's harshness warned her he hadn't yet told her everything, and her eyes demanded the rest. "It's armed and active," he said sighing, "and it's covered by an antitampering system. We can't get to it to disarm it, or even to destroy it."
"Colin!" Jiltanith whispered, and clutched her father's arm.
"He's all right, 'Tanni!" Horus said quickly, covering her hand with his own. "He and Gerald and Adrienne are activating the evacuation plan now. He's fine."
"Nay!" Her fingers tightened like talons. "Father, thou knowest him too well for that, as I! He will not flee so long as any of his folk do stand exposed to such danger!"
"I'm sure—" Horus began, but she shook her head spastically and threw off the covers. She swung her feet to the floor and stood, already reaching for her clothing.
"I must go to him! Mayhap, were I there, I—"
"No, 'Tanni." Her head snapped around, and he shook his head.
"I tell thee I am going." Her voice was chipped ice, but he shook his head, and her tone turned colder still. "Gainsay me in this at thy peril, Father!"
"Not me, 'Tanni," he said softly. "Colin. He's ordered me to keep you here and keep you safe."
Her eyes locked with his, and her fear for her husband struck him like a lash. But he refused to look away, and a dark, terrible sorrow, like a premonition of yet more loss, twisted her face.
"Father, please," she whispered, and he closed his eyes, unable to face her pain, and shook his head once more.
"I'm sorry, 'Tanni. It was Colin's decision, and he's right."
"Dahak is correct," Vlad Chernikov said. "We dare not send any additional scanners into the gallery, but I have deployed passive systems from beyond a Mark Ninety's activation threshold and carried out a purely optical scan using the Palace security systems. While I can find no outward visual evidence, our passive systems have detected active emissions from a broad-spectrum sensor array which are entirely consistent with a Mark Ninety's. I fear that any remote—or, for that matter, any human with Imperial equipment—entering the gallery will cause it to detonate."
"God." Colin closed his eyes, propped his elbows on the conference table, and leaned his face into his palms.
"The evacuation will begin in twenty-five minutes," Adrienne Robbins' holo image said. "I'll coordinate embarkation from the Academy; Gerald will handle ship-to-ship movement from Mother, but we don't have enough ships in-system to handle the entire population."
"Some additional transport'll begin arriving in about ninety-three hours," Hatcher's image said. "Mother sent out an all-ships signal as soon as I got the word. We'll have another six planetoids within a hundred and fifty hours; anything after that'll take at least ten days to get here."
"How many can we get aboard the available ships?" Colin asked tautly.
"Not enough," Hatcher said grimly. "Dahak?"
"Assuming Dahak is used as well, and that we move as many as possible to existing deep-space life support in-system but beyond lethal radius of the weapon, we will be able to lift approximately eighty-nine percent of the Birhat population from the planet," the computer responded. "More than that will be beyond our resources."
"Mat-trans?" Colin said.
"On our list," Adrienne replied, "but the system's too big an energy hog to move people quickly, Colin. It's going to take at least three weeks to move eleven percent of Birhat's population through the facility."
"We don't have three weeks!"
"Colin, all we can do is all we can do." Gerald Hatcher didn't look any happier than Colin, but his voice was crisp.
"We've got to take that bomb out," Colin muttered. "Damn it, there has to be a way!"
"Unfortunately," Dahak said, "we cannot disarm it. That means we can only attempt to destroy it, which will require a weapon sufficient to guarantee its instant and complete disablement from outside the Mark Ninety's perimeter, and the device is located in the most heavily protected structure on Birhat. While we possess many weapons which could assure its destruction, the Palace's structural strength is such that any weapon of sufficient power would effectively destroy Phoenix, as well. In short, we cannot ourselves 'take out' the device without obliterating the Imperium's capital, and all in it."
"Horus! What the hell is going on?" Lawrence Jefferson had commed from Van Gelder Center, Planetary Security's central facility, not his White Tower office, and like many of the people swarming about behind him, he looked as if he'd dressed in the dark in a hurry. Horus wondered how he'd gotten to Van Gelder so quickly, but he wasn't about to look a gift horse in the mouth.
"Big trouble, Lawrence," he replied. "Get as many of your people as you can to the mat-trans facility. We're going to have thousands of people coming through from Birhat, starting in about—" he checked his chrono "—twelve minutes."