A grenade.
He scrabbled with his left hand, trying to intercept it and throw it back, but it was past him, rolling toward the lip.
"Shit!"
There was nothing for it now. He threw himself forward, his gun held chest high, firing into the dense smoke up ahead. Then the explosion pushed him off his feet and he was lying among sandbags at the far end of the tunnel, stunned, his ears ringing.
"Light!" someone was saying. "Get a fucking light here!"
Auden. It was Auden's voice.
"Here!" he said weakly and tried to roll over, but there was something heavy across the back of his legs. Then, more strongly. "I'm here, Sergeant!"
Auden came across quickly and reached down, pulling the body from him. "Thank the gods, sir! I was worried we'd lost you." He leaned forward and hauled Ebert to his feet, supporting him.
Ebert laughed, then slowly sat back down, his legs suddenly weak. "Me too." He looked up again as one of the soldiers brought an arc lamp across to them.
"Shit!" he said, looking about him. "What happened?"
"You must have blacked out, sir. But not before you did some damage here."
Ebert shuddered, then half turned, putting his hand up to his neck. There were two bodies sprawled nearby, facedown beside the sandbags. He looked up at Auden again.
"What are our losses?"
"Six men, sir. Including Leiter. And Grant has a bad head wound. We may have to leave him here for now."
"Six men? Fuck it!" He swallowed, then sat forward. "Do we know how the other squads are doing?"
Auden looked down. "That's another problem, sir. WeVe lost contact. All the channels are full of static."
Ebert laughed sourly. "Static? What's going on? What the fuck's going on?"
Auden shook his head. "I don't know. I really don't know, sir. But it's odd. There's an intersection up ahead that isn't on the map. And when you went up ..." Auden hesitated, then went on. "Well, it seems they must have had a sluice or something at the bottom of the slope. One moment I was standing there, helping get the men on the rope, the next I was knee deep in icy water."
Ebert looked down. So that was the strange sound he had heard. He shivered, then looked back up at Auden. "I wondered. You know that? As I was climbing the rope I was asking myself why they hadn't finished us off at once. Just a couple of grenades. That's all it would have taken. But that explains it, doesn't it? They meant to drown us. But why? What difference would it make?"
Auden smiled grimly back at him. "I don't knowL sir, but if you're feeling all right we'd best press on. I don't like this quiet. I have the feeling they're watching us all the while, getting ready to hit us again."
Ebert smiled and reached out to touch his sergeant's shoulder briefly. "Okay. Then let's get moving, eh?"
Auden hesitated a moment longer. "One last thing, sir. Something you ought to know."
Ebert saw how Auden's eyes went to one of the corpses and felt himself go cold inside. "Don't tell me. They're like the copies at the wedding. Is that it?"
Auden shook his head, then went across and turned over one of the corpses, tugging off its helmet.
"Gods!" Ebert got up slowly and went across, then crouched above the body and, taking his knife from his belt, slit the jacket open, exposing the naked chest beneath.
He looked up at Auden and saw his own surprised bemuse-ment mirrored back at him. "The gods preserve us!" He looked back down at the soft curves of the corpse's breasts, the soft, brown, blinded eyes of the nipples, and shuddered. "Are they all like this?"
Auden nodded. "All the ones IVe looked at so far."
Ebert pulled the jacket back across the dead woman's breasts then stood up, his voice raised angrily. "What does it all mean? I mean, what in hell's name does it all mean?"
Auden shrugged. "I don't know, sir. But I know one thing. Someone told them we were coming. Someone set us up."
GENERAL TOLONEN dismissed the two guards, locked the door, then turned to face the young Prince, his head bowed.
"I am sorry I had to bring you here, young master, but I couldn't chance letting our enemies know of this, however small the risk."
Li Yuan stood there stiffly, his chin raised slightly, a bitter anger in his red-rimmed eyes. He was barely half the General's height and yet his air of command, even in grief, left no doubt as to who was master, who servant, there. The Prince was wearing the cheng fu, the rough, unhemmed sackcloth of traditional mourning clothes, his feet clad in simple, undecorated sandals, his hands and neck bare of all jewelry. It was all so brutally austere—so raw a display of grief—it made Tolonen's heart ache to see him so.
They were in a secure room at the heart of the Bremen fortress. A room no more than twenty ch'i square, cut off on all six sides from the surrounding structure, a series of supporting struts holding it in place. It was reached by way of a short corridor with two air locks, each emptied to total vacuum after use. Most found it an uncomfortable, uneasy place to be. Once inside, however, absolute secrecy could be guaranteed. No cameras looked into the room and no communications links went out from there. In view of recent developments, Tolonen welcomed its perfect isolation. Too much had happened for him to take unnecessary risks.
"Have you spoken to him yet?" Li Yuan asked, anger burning in his eyes. "Did the bastard lie through his teeth?"
The young boy's anger was quite something to be seen. Tolonen had never dreamed he had it in him. He had always seemed so cold and passionless. Moreover, there was an acid bitterness to the words that struck a chord in Tolonen. Li Yuan had taken his brother's death badly. Only vengeance would satisfy him. In that they were alike.
Tolonen removed his uniform cap and bowed to him. "You must be patient, young master. These things take time. I want solid evidence before I confront our friend Berdichev."
The eight-year-old turned away sharply, the abruptness of the gesture revealing his inner turmoil. Then he turned back, his eyes flaring. "I want them dead, General Tolonen. Every last one of them. And I want their families eradicated. To the third generation."
Tolonen bowed his head again. I would, he thought, were that my T'ang's command. But Li Shai Tung has said nothing yet. Nothing of what he feels, or wants, nor of what was said in Council yesterday. What have the Seven decided? How are they to answer this impertinence?
Yes, little master, I would gladly do as you say. But my hands are tied.
"We know much more now," he said, taking Li Yuan's shoulder and steering him across the room to where two chairs had been placed before a screen. He sat, -facing Li Yuan, conscious not only of the boy's grief and anger but also of his great dignity. "We know how it was done."
He saw how Li Yuan tensed.
"Yes," Tolonen said. "The key to it all was simulated vision."
He saw that it meant nothing to Li Yuan and pressed on. "We discovered it in our raid on the SimFic installation at Punto Natales. They had been conducting illegal experiments with it there for more than eight years, apparently. It seems that the soft-wire they found in Chao Yang's head was part of one of their systems."
Li Yuan shook his head. "I don't understand you, General. SimFic have been conducting illegal experiments? Is that it? TheyVe been willfully flouting the terms of the Edict?"
Tolonen nodded but raised a hand to fend off Li Yuan's query. This was complex ground, and he did not want to get into a discussion about how all companies conducted such experiments, then lobbied to get their supposedly "theoretical" products accepted by the ministry.
"Setting that aside a moment," he said, "what is of primary importance here is the fact that Pei Chao Yang was not to blame for your brother's murder. It seems he had brain surgery for a blood clot almost five years ago—an operation that his father, Pei Ro-hen, kept from the public record. Chao had a hunting accident, it seems. He fell badly from his horse. But the operation was a success and he had had no further trouble. That is, until the day of the wedding. Now we know why."