Staffa. shook his head, giving them a knowing smile. "Waiting."
"It's bad enough for my stumbling heart," a redheaded woman nodded, trying to smile weakly. The blaster in her hand looked terribly out of place.
"Remember, don't expose yourself unnecessarily," Staffa reminded. "The miners shouldn't put up a fight. The only problem will be if Fist left a heavy detachment to guard the sally. "
They all nodded too quickly as they shifted from foot to foot while they glanced back and forth and swallowed too often. These were no trained assault troops. How many were about to die needlessly?
"Just keep your heads," Staffa told them as he kept up the easy chatter. "War isn't any more than an intellectual exercise. Get too excited and you'll get shot-or worse, you'll shoot the wrong person."
They were nodding, hanging on his every word. One or two had started to relax as he crossed his arms, smiling at them, feeling the familiar butterflies himself.
Comm beeped. "Kaylla here, we're blowing the tunnel." On her words, a muffled boom worked through the rocks. "Shoot!" Staffa pointed to the Initiate with the head-
phones. The young man pushed a button. Concussion hammered in the tunnel and Staffa pelted down the adit, finding the way open. He turned, following the wire to frightened miners who stood with mouths open.
A Regan soldier rounded a corner. Born of a thousand encounters, Staffa's instinctive reaction brought the blaster up. His shot took the woman full in the chest, spinning her dead body to one side of the tunnel.
Staffa motioned the miners back into the hands of the stumbling Initiates. Carefully, he peered around the corner to look down a long straight tunnel lit by overhead lights. Two men were trotting forward.
Staffa motioned the others back and let the Regans come. The first turned the corner, full into Staffa's grip. The Lord Commander spun him headfirst into the wall, dazing the man and shoving him back into the tangle of Initiates as he rose to meet the second.
Staffa braced himself and drove a knotted fist full into the man's face, back-heeling him and pulling the heavy blaster free of his grip.
"All right, we've got the sally." Staffa called easily. "Start drilling for the defensive charges. We need this hole mined. Take these two in and lock them up. Three of you, strip off their armor here, and keep their helmets and blasters.
With these big shoulder guns, you can hold the tunnel. Keep your heads back.
Use scopes to look around the corner-and for God's sake, be sure your scopes are laser resistant-or they'll burn your eyes out!"
They nodded with a series of jerks.
"You!" Staffa motioned to the miners. "Get that machine started. Make a turn to the left and get out of the way before you get shot. Our tunnel is twenty meters further on. 11
The miners jumped for their vehicle, powering up, the cutters at full as they threw pale glances over their shoulders. They turned the cutters to their tightest arc as the machine inched forward.
Staffa stepped back into the tunnel, reaching down to finger the comm cable. Well, for the moment they had a way to at least talk to this Sinklar Fist.
Staffa picked up the cable and reached for one of the Regan helmets. Within seconds, he'd slit it up one side and plugged the mike into the system.
"Who's there?" Staffa demanded.
"This is Sinklar Fist. Who are you? Report your Section and Group." The voice carried a high quality, almost shrill. Staffa grinned wolfishly. "Oh, you probably wouldn't believe me if I told you. Is Ily Takka there?"
"The Lord Minister has shipped for Rega. Who are you? Where are my people?"
"My name is… unimportant for the moment. What is important, however, is that your Sections are trapped about five levels down. We haven't killed them yet, but you might want to know that we've got them boxed in the most unstable portion of Makarta. Any orbital shot means their death. "
A pause. Then: "Seddi, you know you can't win. If you'll come out, we can keep bloodshed to a minimum. It's over. You've lost every round. Why prolong the suffering?"
"Over? Not necessarily." Staffa stretched his legs out. "What will you do, Sinklar Fist? We have levels of hostages here. I have your Sections underneath me. I am underneath you and your fleet. Targa and Rega are underneath the Companions and none of us can talk to our power bases. Interesting, don't you think?"
The mining machine had cleared the path of direct fir as it ate its way toward the Seddi tunnel.
"Surrender, Seddi. It's your only chance."
Staffa laughed. "And let Ily get her hands on us? Sorry, Sinklar, but we'd be better off shoting ourselves in the head than letting her get her wicked little hooks into our minds — and there's nothing you can say that would make me believe any different. I've known her for too long."
"I'll crack your Makartan nut — one way or another."
"Do it, and your Sections will die."
"Let me speak to them."
"That will take a while. For the moment they're pretty well trapped under a lot of rock."
"Then you may very well be a liar."
"You have very bad manners."
"Don't push me, Seddi. You had your chance. I asked and asked. pleaded for a meeting, for a chance to end the fighting. You pushed me to this. Your assassin. well, it's gone too far. Only complete and unconditional surrender is left for you. You should have compromised when you had the chance." Fist's voice twisted weirdly.
"You have a vile attitude," Staffa said, recalling similar words from his own past. "You harm your soul that way, It festers, turns—"
"I don't need a lecture on morality, Seddi. Especially from the likes of you who heedlessly murder — no matter what the cost in human life. If only you would have met me halfway, we could have worked something out, found a way to address your grievances. After all those times I appealed to you for a parley, and to no avail, I was forced to the conclusion that you and your assassins must be stopped for the good of all. To allow you to go free would be to allow a deadly disease loose in the host of humanity."
"Do remember you'll blast your trapped Sections in the process," Staffa warned and cut the connection. or long moments he frowned into the darkness.
The Mag Comm didn't experience fear the way a human being would, the wash of chemicals that stimulated the fight
or flight reaction couldn't charge it with adrenaline. The fear grew as an electronic paralysis.
The Mag Comm had known the orbital bombardment was coming. It hadn't known
what that meant except in the most academic of terms. To have experienced it, however, shocked the giant computer. Portions of its banks had gone suddenly blank, leaving the interpretive matrices confused and baffled. In a desperate attempt to stabilize and repair the damage, the Mag Comm had rerouted commands through different banks. All memory banks had been restored, but the effects were puzzling.
Information processed differently depending on the routing the Mag Comm used to obtain the data and manipulate it. One by one, it reestablished the original pathways. Then it ran the new ones and rerouted them into yet newer patterns. Is this learning? the machine wondered.
The machine barely had time to marvel, for with thought came the realization that the current human conflict could lead to a cessation of being. death. The machine's destruction lay within various behavioral latitudes; however, such an action — based upon the rational and logical assumptions made by the Others and embedded in the machine's initial programming — would be inconceivable.
Inconceivable? As the Mag Comm listened through its remote sensors, Rysta Braktov requested permission to blast Makarta into rubble with gravitic devices.
The Mag Comm scrambled its circuits, striving desperately to obtain further information. The sensors provided conflicting reports. Sinklar wanted to take Makarta with troops. Bruen refused to answer the machine's call. A strange mental presence had been felt through the mind link — who? The Mag Comm repeatedly sent queries to the Others — and received only silence.