The studio’s main boom had not been damaged. Saldo already was headed for its cage when Hellstrom emerged from the stairwell. Hellstrom swept his gaze around the studio as he followed. Workers’ bodies were being removed briskly by scavenger crews. Casualties, casualties, casualties! Damn those bloody murderers! Hellstrom felt himself experiencing a pure Hive reaction of violent outrage. He wanted to wave his arm to summon followers and sweep down upon the two remaining attackers, tear them apart with bare hands no matter the cost. He sensed the matching eagerness of adrenaline-filled workers all around. They would follow him at the slightest gesture. They no longer were camera crews, actors, technicians, specialists in the multiplex tasks by which the Hive collected Outsider energy/money. They were infuriated workers, every last one of them.
Hellstrom forced himself to cross calmly to the cage, joining Saldo there. He took a deep, trembling breath as he hopped up into the cage. The Hive had never been under such great threat and never before had it needed such cool thinking from its leader specialists. “Get a bullhorn,” Hellstrom told Saldo as the boom lifted them toward the aerie. “Call to the two remaining attackers that they must surrender or be killed. Try to take them alive.”
“If they resist?” It was not Saldo’s normal voice, but pure emotion-charged male, primed for attack.
“You must stop hoping they will resist,” Hellstrom said. “They are to be stunned and taken alive if at all possible. See if you can get under them in the Hive with a stunwand. That might be one way.”
The boom cage wafted them gently to the edge of the loft. Hellstrom stepped out, Saldo right behind. The aerie baffle was open, and excited voices could be heard from inside.
“Tell those workers in there to place more reliance on Hive-sign during stress periods,” Hellstrom ordered, angry. “It keeps down the hubbub and upset.”
“Yes—yes, of course, Nils.”
Saldo found himself awed by the cool command Hellstrom displayed. Here was the true mark of a leader specialist: rational assessment overpowering the anger simmering underneath. No doubt Hellstrom was angered by the attack, but he had himself completely under control.
Hellstrom stepped through the short entry to the aerie and barked, “Let’s have some order in here! Restore that baffle. Is our telephone still open to the Outside?”
The noise subsided immediately. Workers moved to obey. A security specialist, standing at the end of the curved bench that had supported the repeaters, passed a telephone to Hellstrom.
“Get the equipment back up here,” Hellstrom ordered as he took the telephone, “and send an observer down to Project 40. The observer is not to interfere or interrupt in any way, just observe. At the first word of a breakthrough, this observer is to report directly to me. Is that understood?”
“Understood,” Saldo said and moved to obey.
Hellstrom put the telephone to his ear, found it dead. He passed it back to the worker who’d given it to him. “Line’s dead. See about restoring it.”
The worker took the phone and said, “It was working just a minute ago.”
“Well, it’s dead now.”
“Who were you going to call, Nils?”
“I was going to call Washington and try to find out if the time had come to bluff.”
From the diary of Trova Hellstrom.
A filled life, good things in their own time, knowledge of constructive service to your fellows, and into the vats when you die; that is the meaning of true fellowship. One in life, one in death.
Clovis had assigned herself to the first van, overriding Myerlie’s objections that it was “no place for a woman.” She had told him where he could stuff that and he’d slowly smiled, a knowing look behind his eyes. “I understand, honey. It may be a bloody time at that farmhouse and you don’t want to see your little Shorty-baby get it. If he does, I’ll come back and tell you myself.”
So he knows! she thought.
And she spat in his face, brought up her left hand for a chopping blow as he made to strike her. Others intervened and DT had cried, “My God! This is no time to fight among ourselves! What’re you two doing? Come on; let’s get it moving!”
The first opportunity after they left town, they stopped the lead van and bound Kraft securely, gagged him, and dumped him on the bed in the rear. He objected that they were “going to pay for this,” but a gesture with the gun in Clovis’s hand had silenced him. He permitted himself to be bound then and lay afterward on the bed, eyes wide open, studying everything he could see.
Clovis sat beside DT, who drove. She watched the passing scenery without really seeing it. So this was how it all ended. The people at that farm would kill Eddie at the first sign of attack. She’d had time to think about it now and felt this as a certainty. It was what any good agent would do. You didn’t leave danger behind your back. She felt a red rage in front of her eyes; it actually felt as though it were outside her, beckoning her onward. She also began to see possible other motives behind the Chief’s choice of her as leader of this attack. He had wanted the leader to be in a blind, killing rage.
It was after four o’clock before they started. A light breeze brushed ripples in the tall yellow range grass beside the dirt road. She saw the grass, focused on it, looked ahead, and realized they had reached the last turn before the fence. DT was pushing the big van to its limit, roaring up the last mile of road.
“You nervous?” DT asked.
She glanced at the hard, youthful face, still dark with the tan he’d developed in Vietnam. DT’s green flight cap cast dark shadows over his eyes, accenting the small white scar at the bridge of his nose.
“That’s a helluva question,” she said, raising her voice over the motor’s roar.
“Nothing wrong with being nervous before a fight,” he said. “I remember one time in Nam—”
“I don’t want to hear about your fucking brawl!” she cut him off.
He shrugged, noticed that her face was almost gray. She was taking this hard. Helluva business for a woman. Myerlie had been right. No sense getting into that scrap, though. If she wanted to be the gung-ho Ms., that was her lookout. Just as long as she knew how to handle the satchel charge. From all reports, she did.
“What do you do when you’re not working?” he asked.
“What’s it to you, Junior?”
“Christ, you’re feisty! I was just making conversation.”
“Then make it with yourself!”
I’d rather make it with you, baby, he thought. You’ve got a nice body. And he wondered how Shorty enjoyed that. Everybody knew about those two, of course. A real thing. Bad business in the Agency, not like him and Tymiena—good clean sex. That was why Clovis was taking this so hard, naturally. Shorty was sure as hell going to get it the minute they opened up. And with Shorty dead, she’d wind up running this show!
He glanced at her once more. Did the Agency really trust her to run this sort of thing?
“They’re not expecting us,” he said. “This could be a piece of cake. We’ll walk right through the place. How many people you think they have up there? Twenty? Thirty, maybe?”
“It’s going to be a gawdawful mess,” she snarled. “Now, shut up!”
Kraft, listening from the rear of the van, felt something akin to pity for them. They were going to run into a wall of stunwands, every one set to maximum. It was going to be slaughter. He had resigned himself to dying with the pair in this van. What would they do if they knew how many workers really were in the Hive? What would they say if they came back and asked him and he told them, oh, fifty thousand or so, give or take a couple of hundred.