That said, for a lot of people in the modern universe—and Anton happened to be one of them—nuclear weapons carried a lingering ancient horror. They had been the first weapons of mass destruction developed and used by human beings against each other. For that reason, perhaps, they still had a particular aura about them.

Of course, that was exactly the reason Hansen and his group—certainly David Pritchard—were so determined to use nuclear explosives. Not only were they in the grip of a ferocious anger going back centuries, but the knowledge which Anton and Victor had given them that Mesa planned to destroy Torch had given that fury a tremendous boost. Stripped to its raw and bleeding essentials, the attitude of Hansen's people could be summed up as: So the scorpions want to play rough, do they? No problem. Rough it is.

They knew that setting off nuclear devices on Mesa itself would constitute a massive—indeed, qualitative—increase in the already-murderous intensity of the struggle between slaves and their creators. The plans of those slavemasters to violate the Eridani Edict would do the same, of course. But, at least once, it would be slaves who struck the first such blow.

Zilwicki had real doubts about the wisdom of that course of action. Even Victor did, if not to the same degree as Anton. But there was a momentum to this fight that, at certain places and times—and he suspected this was one of them—overrode all caution.

For a moment, hearing a slight rustling noise to his left, Anton stopped and turned toward it. That was just a reflex action on his part, making clear to anyone who contemplated attacking him that such a course of action would be most unwise.

Perhaps it was inevitable. Perhaps even beneficial. Anton had no hope that the people behind this "Mesan Alignment" scheme could be brought to see reason. Just the information McBryde had already given them made it obvious that, for all their intellect and acuity, they'd abandoned reason centuries ago. But maybe they could be intimidated, in the same crude manner that Anton was even now intimidating whoever lurked in that darkness to the side of the passageway.

Probably not. Almost certainly not. But was it still worth a try?

What decided him in the end, though, was none of that. It was nothing more sophisticated than the impulses driving Hansen and Pritchard and their people. These Mesan Alignment people and their Manpower stooges were, after all, the same swine who had kidnapped one of his daughters, tried to murder another, tried to murder his wife—him too, of course, but he held no grudge about that—and were now trying to murder his daughter again.

To hell with it. Let them burn.

They'd already decided Anton would spend this last night in Victor and Yana's safe house. That posed a slight risk, but less than adding an additional complication to their actions on the morrow by requiring yet another rendezvous.

His two companions were there when he arrived, sitting at the same kitchen table where they'd spent so many hours already.

"You're looking pensive," said Victor. "Is something troubling you, Anton?"

He draped the jacket he'd been wearing to fend off the chill over one of the seats. "No," he said.

Late that night, Lajos came to his decision. Much as he hated to take the risk, he didn't see where he had any choice. He'd have to tell Bardasano.

Tomorrow, early in the morning. It'd take a fair amount of persuasion before he could get past Bardasano's aides, since he was not one of the people she had any regular contact with. Trying to do it at night was probably impossible.

Tomorrow would be soon enough, anyway. It wasn't as if Jack was going anywhere.

Chapter Fifty-Two

Jack McBryde felt a curious brittle, singing hollowness swirling around inside him as he offered his retinal pattern to the scanner and slid his hand through the biometric security sensors as he'd done so many times before. Even now, it was almost impossible for him to believe—really believe—that this was the last time he would ever do it.

"Good morning, Chief McBryde," the uniformed sergeant behind the sensors said with a smile. "Didn't expect to see you here today. Sure as hell, not this early."

"I didn't expect to see me here today, either," McBryde replied with carefully metered wry humor. "That was before I realized how far behind I am, though." He rolled his eyes. "Turns out there are a few little details that need to be tied up for my quarterly reports."

"Ouch." The sergeant chuckled sympathetically. Unlike some of his peers, Jack McBryde was popular with his subordinates, and part of that was because he didn't go around ripping people's heads off because he thought he was some sort of tin god.

"Well, I'd better get to it," McBryde sighed, then shook his head. "Oh, by the way, I'm expecting Dr. Simões. Send him straight along to my office when he gets here, okay?"

"Yes, Sir."

The sergeant's sympathetic humor vanished. By now, everyone in the Center knew about Simões. They knew how long and hard McBryde had fought to keep him functional . . . and they also knew the security chief had finally lost the battle. The sergeant very much doubted that McBryde was looking forward to what would almost certainly be his final interview with the embittered scientist.

"Thanks."

McBryde nodded, then headed for his office.

Lajos Irvine showed up at Steph Turner's diner at eight in the morning, as Bardasano had instructed him to do, feeling distinctly unhappy with this assignment. His unhappiness stemmed from two factors.

First, he disliked—intensely—getting orders that were vague to the point of being oatmeal.

Check out the diner and see if you can spot anything suspicious. Let me know right away on my private com if anything turns up. While you're doing that, I'll be putting McBryde through the wringer to find out what the hell he thinks he's doing.

Wonderful. And Bardasano was supposed to be some sort of star-line genius! She might as well have told him to hang out at the playground and tell her if he spotted any of the kids acting in an unruly manner. What—specifically—did she want him to look for? Who knew?

Something about McBryde's activities must have rattled her more than he'd thought they would. Oh, having it come at her cold probably accounted for some of that, and Irvine supposed having a peon of his own lowly rank crash her security just as she was sitting down to breakfast probably hadn't helped. Maybe she just wasn't a morning person?

His lips quirked slightly at the thought, even now, but the temptation to smile faded quickly. At least some confusion had to be inevitable when a junior agent jumped the queue the way he had, but this struck him as more than just the inevitable bureaucratic confusion of something the size and complexity of Alighnment Security. By all accounts he'd ever heard, Bardasano was normally as sharp as a razor, yet no impartial observer would have reached that conclusion based on the instructions she'd given him.

The second source of his unhappiness, and an even greater one, was shuffling along the street about a hundred meters behind him. In addition to giving him vague instructions, Bardasano had also insisted on saddling Lajos with what she called "backup." Three people from one of her "special units"—whatever the hell that meant—who'd be there to provide him with whatever force he might need.

Wonderful. Irvine was a spy, not some sort of stupid HD "action hero." He collected information, was what he did. If Bardasano wanted him to do his job, he'd be able to do it a lot better working on his own with no backup at all—much less "backup" whose fieldcraft was so rusty that probably the mutts in the street knew the three clowns following him were official muscle. And if, on the contrary, she wanted to crack down on whoever was at the diner this morning, then why the hell did she insist on dragging Lajos into the business at all?