He pressed his eyes shut, jaws locked, and bowed his head. He jammed fists against his ears to shut out the world around him.
What's happening to me? Why is it all coming apart? This Seddi and I, we are stalemated. One moves, the other counters. Brilliant, yes. as brilliant as I am. Is this Bruen? Can I defeat him? Can I.
He took a ragged breath to stretch his weary lungs, aware of a blinding headache pounding behind his eyes. "Mac? I can't lose you! I won't. God, but I promised you all!"
If only Gretta were here to soothe him, to put it all in perspective.
He suffered a sense of desperation he'd never known before. A knot pulled tight in his chest as he looked at the haunting green mountain that filled his holo monitor. The
ruby red passages of the Seddi seemed to pulse — veins and arteries of Seddi blood. Daunting, mocking.
Staffa had come to dislike rock walls. To the Seddi they might provide a sense of security, but to him, the cramped quarters in a starship didn't
place the same weight on the sou!. True, there might be less space aboard ship, but you could peer out at the stars and the endless vacuum of space. A starship moved — an artificial human environment heading someplace. In Makarta, he felt buried.
Staffa rubbed his eyes. The first tendrils of fatigue had begun to wind familiar paths through his brain. He glanced up at Kaylla where she stared down at the map from the opposite side of the table. The walls around them were studded with monitors, and the overhead lights seemed much too bright.
"Lord Commander?" An Initiate's face formed on one of the inset monitors. "We've got vibrations from all directions."
Staffa turned to nod at the man. "Very good. I'll need a plot on the maps. If we can determine what Fist is up to, we can counter." He turned to another monitor. "Wilm? They're driling. Be ready for another strike." To Kaylla, he added gently, "You might want to wake the Magister."
Kayla nodded and left as information began filling the monitors, plotting locations around the mountain.
Staffa moved to yet another monitor and flipped a button. "Hello, Regans. How are things in the darkness?"
"Who's this?" A suspicious voice asked.
"Your captor."
"Oh, well, let me cue you in on something, pal. You're caught between a rock and a hard spot, 'cause Sink is up there, and he's got more than enough power to rip this whole mountain apart. You up for five more Divisions, Seddi?"
"Your name is?" Staffa inquired, thinking about those other five Divisions. Rysta's no doubt. The ones Fist had decapitated.
"First MacRuder of the Second Targan Assault Division.
You know, you still have the option to surrender. No more need to die."
"That's right," Staffa agreed. "All your Fist needs to do is promise us transport off the planet and to let us go in peace."
"Fat chance!" the voice in the darkness exploded. "After what you did to Gretta? After the way you made a machine out of that Arta Pera?"
"Who?" Staffa noted that Bruen had entered, going stiff at the name.
"Your assassin, Seddi. The one who killed Gretta. I saw the tapes of her body after your Arta was through. And I can tell you for a fact, friend. I'll die before I let monsters like you walk out of this rock."
"So much for your assertion that no one else needs to die," Staffa responded caustically. "You should be running low on water. The IR batteries must be getting weak, too. Be careful. You've been trying to blow your way out with blasters. Keep an eye on the cracks in the rock overhead. You're in the part of the caverns which suffered quite a bit of damage in the orbital assault."
"Yeah, well listen," MacRuder's voice came firmly. "We're the best Sinklar Fist has. and we don't surrender! We'll be here, waiting to clean your polluted—"
"Enjoy the darkness." Staffa flicked the comm off. He turned to Bruen, eyebrows lifted. "Arta Fera? Once more, your assassin raises her ugly head. She must have really angered them."
Bruen's bruise-mottled face went glum, showing his misery. "Yes, she had certain psychological behavioral implants." He sank into a chair and leaned thin elbows on the table. "A very dear girl, our Arta. We bred her specifically for you. Trained her, adapted her, did everything in our power to tailor her for you. Except the quanta shorted the whole thing and turned our success into tragedy, our enemies into allies. Everything worked out wrong."
Staffa's eyes slitted. "Another human construct, Magister? Another piece of God molded to a specific purpose? Smacks of a high order of humanity, don't you think?"
Bruen lifted a stooped shoulder in reply. "What would it be worth to save our species Lord Commander? When you
don't deal in fleets and interstellar firepower, you must deal in deceit and subterfuge."
He shook his head slowly, raising watery eyes to meet Staffa's. "I — like you — live in a hell of my own making, Lord Commander. I'm no pristine innocent. I go
to my grave with Arta's dear face forever before me. The horror she lives is mine until she dies — which, hopefully Fist has attended to by this time. Last we heard, he was going to execute her. The fact that Ily showed up, and we are under siege, proves they didn't dispatch her until they milked her dry."
"No poison capsule hidden on her body?"
Bruen shook his head. "With a psychological trigger, you can't trust your agent to act in the manner you hope. At a man's first touch, she might have self-destructed before she accomplished her mission."
Staff a paced the narrow room, tapping his knuckles on the chair backs. "Ily can make a rock talk. She knows everything your assassin knows. And if there's any possible advantage to keeping Fera alive, Ily will do it. If I was to make a bet, I'd say Ily has Arta in the collar now. Satisfied?"
Bruen's eyes hardened. He countered with, "The damn things come from your factories."
A cold wave washed through Staff a as, furious, he turned on the old man. "Don't get righteous with me, Magister! I can't even dicker a way out of here because Fist and MacRuder have been so alienated by Seddi politics that they'd slit their wrists before they'd let you out of here alive!"
"And blame is meaningless here!" Kaylla interjected as she walked into the room and slapped the table. "The problem we face, gentlemen, is there, on the comm. Those vibration sources. I suggest we leave recriminations until another time."
No man could look into those hard tan eyes without feeling foolish. Staffa shot her a measuring glance and jerked a nod.
Kaylla's mouth twitched. "We had better consider the source. Fist has us. We can't break him. We know those are the facts. We're fighting for leverage — to save as many lives as possible here." She gestured. "In the future, we
have to remember that. If we begin bickering, each argument is another rock tossed on all our graves." Bruen chuckled dryly. "Ah, Kaylla, you were always the brightest of my students. Why did you ever have to be so foolish as to fall in love and run off with that daring young ' man?"
"The time for that is past too, Magister." She couldn't help shooting a quick glance in Staffa's direction. "Now, let's get back to work, shall we?"
The Initiate's face formed on the screen again, a slight confusion on his features. "Sir, not all the vibrations are mining equipment. Some are drills."
"And what would Sinklar Fist use a drill for?" Staffa asked, brow furrowed, ready to change the subject — to escape into the impossible present.
Bruen's voice came gruffly, "Core samples to investigate subsurface deposits, tap a water supply, access geothermal energy, ventilation, seismic shots—"
"As in placing a subsurface charge?" Staffa interrupted.
"My God!" Bruen gasped, putting a thin hand to his chest. "They could mine the entire mountain, detonate it bit by bit. Blow strategic tunnels to isolate us."