"My God!" he cried in agony. "My God, my God, what have You let me do?"
Honor jerked in astonishment as the assassin dropped his weapon, and then, through the howl of sirens and the bellow of flames, she heard his anguished cry. She saw the horror on his face, the total disbelief that turned instantly into a hopeless agony so deep, so terrible, that she felt a wrenching stab of pity for the man who'd tried to kill her. Who had killed the gentle, compassionate Reverend... and who, in that horrible moment of recognition, knew he had.
Someone else moved, and she rolled her head as Jamie Candless lurched to his feet. She felt the terrible effort with which the swaying armsman fought off the collapse of his abused body, and his face was a mask of blood and hate as he stared at Reverend Hanks' murderer. He drew his pulser with the slow, dreadful precision of an executioner while the killer sobbed and rocked on his knees. The weapon rose and steadied, aimed at a head less than three meters from it, and Candless's trigger finger began to tighten.
"Alive!" It took all Honor's strength to get the word out, but somehow she did. "We need him alive!"
She was still breathless, her voice hoarse, and, for an instant she thought Candless hadn't heard her. For another, even more terrible moment she thought he would refuse to obey, but he was an armsman. His lips drew back in a snarl of baffled, murderous hate, and then he staggered the two steps it took to reach Martin, and the pulser in his hand rose and came crashing down.
Candless went back to his own knees with the force of his blow. He lacked the strength to rise off them a third time, but there was no need. The pulser butt struck the back of Edward Martin's head like a hammer, and merciful unconsciousness dragged him away from the horror of his own deed.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
William Fitzclarence glared at his HDs nonstop news bulletins in bloodshot exhaustion, and hopeless, unanswerable questions stuttered through his brain.
By now, all Grayson knew something terrible had happened at Harrington Space Facility, but no one knew what. The Harrington Guard had clamped a steel cordon no one was getting through about the facility. The first, and only, news crew to try entering HSF airspace had come within millimeters of being shot out of the sky, and freedom of the press or no, none of their colleagues had felt the slightest temptation to try their own luck.
But Lord Burdette, unlike the newsies, knew what was supposed to have happened, and that made him far more desperate for information. Because what he didn't know was whether or not Taylor and Martin had succeeded. Grim-faced steading spokesmen had already confirmed over eighty dead, but they refused to release any names, and the shouted questions about Steadholder Harrington had been answered with stony silence. Did that mean the bitch was dead? Or, far more frightening, did it mean she wasn't? And what about Martin and Taylor? He knew they would never let themselves be taken alive, but if they'd somehow escaped, he would have heard from them by now. Had they been engulfed in the holocaust their attack had ignited, burned beyond recognition? Or had their bodies been identified?
The Steadholder scrubbed his face with trembling hands and longed for Brother Marchants comforting presence. But the cleric was out pumping his own information sources, and he was alone with the terror of what he'd unleashed.
Damn it, the harlot had deserved to die! Her very existence was an offense against God, and Burdette did not, would not, feel remorse for her. But he'd never counted on all those other deaths, and somehow it had never occurred to him that he wouldn't know whether his men had even been found, much less identified. He'd been so sure, so confident, God would insure their success, as He'd insured their success against the Mueller dome. Now he didn't know, but if the bitch had lived, if Satan had somehow preserved her yet again, or if Martin or Taylor had been identified...
He swore again, then snapped his mouth shut and begged God to forgive his doubts, the unseemly panic he couldn't shake.
But God said nothing, and Burdette groaned deep in his throat at His silence.
Edward Martin sat in the small, bare cell and stared numbly at nothing. He'd been stripped to his underwear, his hands were cuffed behind him, and his head was a pounding drum filled with dull pain, but his captors had treated him far more gently than he'd expected. Than he'd wanted them to. The horror of what he'd done was a bleeding wound, oozing black despair and self-hate that cried out for punishment, and punishment had been denied him.
He sat in the hard, metal chair bolted to the floor, and the eternity he'd laid up for himself in Hell sat with him. He'd killed the Reverend. He hadn't meant to, hadn't planned to, hadn't even known Reverend Hanks would be there! But none of that mattered. He'd laid his hands on the weapons of violence in God's name, and Satan had taken him in the cruelest snare of all, used him to destroy God's chosen steward.
He'd been so sure, so certain, he'd heard God's voice. Had it truly been Satan's all along? And if it had, what did that say about Lady Harrington? Was she the Devil's tool? She still could be, he thought desperately. She could! Satan's laughter would rock Hell at the thought of using his tool to trick Martin into destroying the head of God's Church. But... what if she wasn't? What if Reverend Hanks had been right all along, that God's will, not Satan's, had sent her to Grayson? Had he allowed his own fear to blind him and listened to Satan's lies as God's Own truth?
Had he killed Reverend Hanks, and all those other men, and helped others kill children for nothing?
He moaned and writhed in the chair, longing for death and terrified it might find him before he had a chance to beg the forgiveness of God and Man, and only the echo of his own anguished sound came back from the barren cell walls in answer.
Damn it to hell, what had the man been thinking about? Or had he thought at all?
Samuel Mueller had no doubt who was responsible for the events in Harrington. He could even reconstruct the logic behind them, but what the hell had possessed Burdette to try something as blatant, and chancy, as this?
He grabbed the remote and killed his HD with a vicious snap. One thing was plain: whether Harrington had lived or died, whoever was in charge was stonewalling all questions. Was it Mayhew? Mueller frowned, then nodded. It could be. More, it should be. The Protector would want a total lock on the facts until he'd decided how to handle them, whatever they were.
Mueller leaned back in his chair, rubbing his upper lip, and his mind raced. Aside from Maccabeus, no one had tried to assassinate a steadholder in over four centuries. He had no idea how the shock of that would impact on the anti-Harrington hatred he'd worked so hard to help Burdette and Marchant create, but if she'd survived, it was at least possible the attack would swing opinion in her favor. That was bad enough, but if whoever Burdette had used for it could be identified, traced back to him, then the fool had put Mueller at risk along with himself.
Well, he'd made his own plans for that eventuality. It wouldn't do to execute them prematurely. If Burdette survived this undetected, he would remain too valuable an ally, assuming he could be prevented from doing something else equally stupid, to turn into an enemy with attacks on his fellow fanatics. But if this disaster was as complete as it could be ...