She considered reporting to Alicia, but there was no point.
"Look! She's still decelerating!" Tannis Cateau exclaimed. "Maybe we were wrong!"
"Maybe we were," Keita agreed, but he met Ben Belkassem's eyes behind her and shook his head minutely.
"Admiral Horth, Bogey One is transmitting."
"Well?" The admiral eyed the com rating narrowly, alerted by something in the man's voice. "What does he say?"
"We don't know, Ma'am. It's an awful tight beam and it wasn't addressed to us-we just caught the edge of the carrier as it went past, and it's encrypted."
"Encrypted?" Treadwell's voice was sharp, and the com rating nodded.
"Yes, Sir. We're working on it, but it's going to take time. It's imperial in origin, but we've never seen anything quite like it."
"And it's being sent to the alpha-synth?" Horth pressed.
"Yes, Ma'am."
The admiral nodded, then watched Brinkman and Treadwell exchange glances and wondered just what the hell was going on.
Only three of the outer forts could range on Megaira, but SLAMs streaked out from them, and a low, harsh growl quivered in Alicia's throat as she watched their deadly sparkles come. They were beautiful, their threat lost in the elemental splendor of destruction, and part of her wanted to reach out and embrace their glory. But she couldn't. She must dance with them, avoiding them, cutting through them to reach the object of her hate.
She watched Megaira flirt with death, trolling the SLAMs off course with her electronic wiles, flipping aside to evade the ones she could not enmesh, and the AI's pain was a knife in her own heart. Yet she was beyond pain. Pain only fed her hunger, whatever its source.
Tisiphone stood silent and helpless in Alicia's mind. It was all she could do to keep Alicia's blind savagery from dragging Megaira under and clouding the lightning-fast reflexes which kept them both alive.
She'd never guessed what she was creating, never imagined the monster she'd spawned. She'd seen the power of Alicia DeVries's mind without recognizing the controls which kept that power in check, and only now had she begun to understand fully what she had done.
She had shattered those controls. The compassion and mercy she'd feared no longer existed, only the red, ravening hunger. Yet terrible as that might be, there was worse. She'd found the hole Alicia had gnawed through the wall about her inner rage, and she couldn't close it. Somehow, without even realizing it was possible, Alicia had reached beyond herself. She'd followed Tisiphone's connection to the Fury's own rage, her own destruction, and made that incalculable power hers as well.
For the first time in millennia, Tisiphone faced another as powerful as herself, a mortal mind which had stolen the power of the Furies themselves, and that power had driven it mad.
Vice Admiral Rebecca Horth sat silently, lips pressed firmly together, as the renegade alpha-synth evaded her SLAMs. More forts were firing now, and some of them, at least, were coming closer … but not close enough.
She checked the converging vectors again and frowned. The dispatch boat would pass within a few thousand kilometers of Soissons on its course to meet the alpha-synth, but if the alpha-synth maintained its present deceleration, it would pass well behind the planet when it crossed Soissons's orbit. Which made no sense, unless … .
She stiffened in her chair and started punching new numbers into Tracking's extrapolations, and her face paled.
Ben Belkassem stood silent, chewing the inside of his lip raw, and smelled the tension about him. The dispatch boat's velocity was down to seventy-two percent of light-speed, but Alicia's more powerful drive had Megaira down to barely .88 C despite her far shorter deceleration period.
No one spoke, and he wondered if Keita suspected what he did. Probably. Did Tannis? He glanced at the major's white, strained features and looked away. She might not admit it to herself, but she must be beginning to.
He returned his gaze to the plot. Thank God he'd left Megaira the O Branch codes. At least they could talk to each other without Defense Command-and Treadwell-listening in.
"What the-?" Lieutenant Anders twitched in surprise and looked up at his supervisor. "Sir, Bogey Two's just made a second turnover! She's stopped decelerating and started accelerating again."
Emotionless computers considered the changed data, and Anders gasped.
"Oh my God-she's on a collision course for Orbit One!"
Tannis groaned as Megaira turned end-for-end and aligned her Fasset drive on the point in space Orbit One would reach in forty-two minutes and sixteen seconds. It turned the drive into a shield against the heavier fire of the inner fortress ring-and at the moment she reached Orbit One, the alpha-synth would have regained virtually all the velocity she'd lost. Alicia would be moving at .985 C when she rammed.
Fifty-seven minutes after it had been sent, Keita's desperate message converged with Megaira's receivers.
Alicia looked up incuriously as a com screen blinked to life. She recognized the face, but the person who had known and respected-even loved-that man was dead, and the powerful voice meant less than the brutal vibration lashing Megaira's over-stressed hull.
"Alley, I know what you're doing," the voice said, "but you don't have to. We have independent confirmation, Alley; we know who you're after, and I swear we'll get him. You've done enough-now you have to break off." Sir Arthur Keita's eyes pled with her from the screen and his voice was raw with pain yet soft. "Please, Alley. Break off. You don't have to kill nine thousand people. Don't turn yourself into the very thing you hate."
Alley? It was Megaira's pleading mental voice. Alley, they know about Treadwell. You don't have to-
"It doesn't matter! They knew about Watts and let the bastard live! You think someone like Treadwell won't have something to trade them for his life?!"
But Uncle Arthur's given you his word! Please, Alley! Don't make me help you kill yourself!
Alicia only snarled in response. She turned her eyes from the screen where Keita's face still begged her to relent. She closed her ears to his voice, and deep at her very core, where even she could no longer hear it, a lost soul sobbed in torment. She locked her attention on Orbit One, ignoring the SLAMs still flashing towards her. All that mattered was that distant sphere of battle steel. Her smoking bloodlust craved the destruction to come-and the last, dying fragment of the person she once had been embraced it as her only escape from what she had become.
"She's not breaking off," Tannis whispered, and Keita nodded. Ten minutes had passed since Alicia must have received their message, and Megaira held her course unflinchingly. He glanced at the plot. The dispatch boat had crossed Soisson's orbit eleven minutes ago, and the range to Megaira had fallen to thirty light-minutes. The handful of warships in the system were converging on the alpha-synth, but none of them could reach her in time.
He closed his eyes, then turned to the dispatch boat's commander.
"I need two volunteers. One in the engine room and one on the helm. Put the rest of your people into your shuttle and get out of here."
The lieutenant looked up in confusion, but Ben Belkassem understood.
"I'm a pretty fair helmsman, Sir Arthur," he said.
"What-?"
Tannis broke off, eyes widening, and stared mutely at Keita. The brigadier gazed back, sad eyes unflinching, and she bit her lip.
"Go with them, Tannis," he said gently.
"No. Let me talk to her! I can stop her-I know I can!"
"There's no time … and there's only one shuttle. If you don't leave now, you can't leave at all."
"I know," she said, and he started to make it an order, then sighed.