It was insane and probably futile, but Inanna had been right. The violence of the plan obviously appealed to Anu, and that was what mattered. As long as Anu was convinced Ganhar was Doing Something, Ganhar would hang on to his position and the perquisites that went with it. Like breathing.

"Let me have a preliminary plan as soon as possible, Ganhar," Anu said, addressing the Operations head more courteously than he had since Cuernavaca. Then he nodded dismissal, and his three subordinates rose to leave.

Jantu was in a hurry to get back to his office, but Inanna blocked him in the corridor, apparently by accident, as she turned to Ganhar.

"Oh, Ganhar," she said, "I'm afraid I have some bad news for you."

"Oh?"

Jantu paused as Ganhar spoke. He wanted to hear anything that was trouble for Ganhar, he thought viciously.

"Yes. One of your people got caught in a malfunction in Bislaht's transit shaft—a freak grav surge. We didn't think she was too badly hurt when they brought her into sickbay, but I'm afraid we were wrong. I'm sorry to say one of my med techs missed a cerebral hemorrhage, and we lost her."

"Oh." There was something strange about Ganhar's voice. He didn't sound surprised enough, and there was an odd, sick little undertone. "Uh, who was it?" he asked after a moment.

"Bahantha, I'm afraid," Inanna said, and Jantu froze. He stared at Inanna in disbelief, and she turned slowly to meet his eyes. Something gleamed in the depths of her own gaze, and he swallowed, filled with a sudden dread suspicion.

"I see it's shaken you, too, Jantu," she said softly. "Terrible, isn't it? Even here in the enclave, you can't be entirely safe, can you?"

And she smiled.

Chapter Eighteen

"God damn them! Damn them to Hell!"

Hector MacMahan's normally expressionless face twisted with fury. His clenched fists trembled at his sides, and Colin looked away from the colonel, sick at heart himself, to study the other three people at the table.

Horus looked shaken and ill, like a man trapped in a horrifying nightmare, and Isis sat silently, frail shoulders bowed. Her lashes were wet, and she stared blindly down at the age-delicate hands folded in her lap.

Jiltanith was expressionless, her relaxed hands folded quietly on the table, but her eyes were deadly. Neither group of Imperials had operated so openly during her subjective lifetime, and though she might have accepted the possibility of such a response intellectually, she hadn't really imagined it as a probability. Now it had happened, and Colin felt the fury radiating from her... and the focused strength of will it took to control it.

And how did he feel? He considered that for a moment, and decided Hector had just spoken for him, as well.

"All right," he said finally. "We knew they weren't exactly stable, and they've given plenty of past examples of their willingness to do things like this. We should have anticipated what they'd do."

"I should have anticipated it, you mean," MacMahan said bitterly.

"I said 'we' and I meant 'we.' The strategy was yours, Hector, but we were all involved in the planning, and the Council approved it. We figured if they knew we were hitting them, we'd be the targets they chose to strike back at. It was a logical estimate, and we all shared it."

" 'Tis true, Hector," Jiltanith said softly. "This plan was product of us all, not thine alone." She smiled bitterly. "And did not we twain counsel Colin madmen yet might dismay us all? Take not more guilt upon thyself than is thy due."

"All right." MacMahan drew a deep breath and sat. "Sorry."

"We understand," Colin said. "But right now, just tell us how bad it is."

"I suppose it could be worse. They've gotten about thirty of our Terra-born—seven at once when they hit that Valkyrie at Corpus Christi; Vlad Chernikov would've made eight, and he may still lose his arm unless we can break him out of the hospital and get him into Nergal's sickbay—but our own losses haven't been that high. Most of the people they've slaughtered are exactly what they seem to be: ordinary citizens.

"The death toll from the Eden Two mass missile strike is about eighteen thousand. That was a pay-back for Cuernavaca, I suppose. The bomb at Goddard got another two hundred. The nuke they smuggled into Klyuchevskaya leveled the facilities, but the loss of life was minimal thanks to the 'terrorists' ' phoned-in warning. Sandhurst and West Point were Imperial weaponry—warp grenades and energy guns. I imagine they were retaliation for Tehran and Kuiyeng. The Brits lost about three hundred people; the Point lost about five."

He paused and shrugged unhappily.

"It's a warning to back off, and I—we—should have seen it coming. It's classic terrorist thinking, and it fits right into Anu's own sick mentality."

"Agreed. The question is, what do we do about it? Horus?"

"I don't know," Horus said in a flat voice. "I'd like to say shut down. We've hurt them worse than we ever did before. We'd have to shut down pretty soon, anyway, and too many people are getting killed. I don't think I can take another bloodbath." He looked at his hands and spoke with difficulty.

"This isn't a drop in the bucket compared to Genghis Khan or Hitler, but it's still too much. It's happening all over again, and this time we started it, Maker help us. Can't we stop sooner than we planned?" He turned desperate eyes to Hector and Jiltanith. "I know we all agreed we needed Stalking-Horse, but haven't we done them enough damage for our purposes?"

"Isis?"

"I have to agree with Dad," Isis said softly. "Maybe I'm too close to it because of Cal and the girls, but..." She paused, and her lips trembled. "I... just don't want to be responsible for any more slaughter, Colin."

"I understand," he said gently, then looked at her sister. "Jiltanith?"

"There's much in what thou sayst, Father, and thou, Isis," Jiltanith said quietly, "yet if we do halt our actions all so swift upon his murders, wi' no loss of our own, may we not breed suspicion? If e'er doubt there was, there is no longer: Anu and his folk have run full mad. Yet in their madness lurketh danger, for 'tis most unlike they'll take a sane man's view o'things.

"Full sorely ha' we smote his folk. Now ha' they dealt us buffets in return, and 'tis in my mind that e'en now they watch us close, hot to scent our stomach for this work. And if but so little blood—for so know we all Anu will see it—and it not ours stoppeth up our blows, may not doubt hone sharp the wit of one so cunning, be he e'er so mad? Be risk of that howe'er small, yet risk there still must be. 'Twas 'gainst that very danger Stalking-Horse was planned." She met her father's pleading eyes.

"Truth maketh bitter bread i'such a pass," her voice was even softer, "but whate'er our hearts may tell us, i'coldest truth it mattereth but little how many lives Anu may spend. Their blood is innocent. 'Twill haunt us all our whole lives long. Yet if we fail, then all compassion may ha' spared will live but till such time as come the Achuultani. 'Tis in my mind we durst not cease—not yet, a while. Some few attacks more, then turn to Stalking-Horse as was the plan, would be my counsel."

Colin nodded slowly as he recognized her anguish. Her eyes were hooded, armoring the torment her own words had given her, and behind her barricaded face, he knew, she was seeing countless, nameless men, women, and children she had never met. Yet she was right. That the blood that would be shed was innocent would mean nothing to Anu. Might he not assume it meant less to them than the lives of their own people?

They couldn't know that, but Jiltanith had the resolution to face the possibility and the moral courage to voice it.