She sensed Nikolos shrug. "There won't be any direct attacks on the young and infirm, if that's what you're worried about," he said. "The Warriors we sent ashore will be preparing for the confused homeward rush of Grays that I expect to happen when they realize they've been duped. With their sentries in the city reporting a mass of Warriors moving across southern Manhattan, they'll assume my entire force is there and won't expect to encounter any opposition in their home bases in Queens and Brooklyn. Ten Warriors guarding each of the likely approaches should be easily able to pick them off as they charge blindly in."

Caroline's hands curled with vicious strength around the railing. "And you consider this an honorable way to make war?"

"We do what we have to," Nikolos said evenly. "They'd do the same to us if they had the chance."

He paused. "I am sorry, though, that you had to be dragged into it. I would have preferred to leave you and your husband out of it."

"I'm sure you would," she said bitterly. "Ideally, of course, you'd also have preferred that Melantha die so that you could lull the Grays into a false sense of security."

"The Grays didn't want security, Caroline," he said darkly. "All they wanted was enough of an edge over us to guarantee victory. If Melantha had died, they'd have attacked us within days. Possibly even within hours."

"You can't know that."

He shrugged. "Perhaps not in a strictly philosophical sense. But I personally have no doubts."

"Because of what happened seventy-five years ago in another world?"

"Kindly do not presume to lecture me, Caroline," Nikolos said, his voice simmering with hatred. "I was there. You weren't."

For a long moment he stood silently. Then, he seemed to shake himself. "At any rate, it should be over by dawn," he said. "Possibly even by midnight, if the Grays are cooperative enough to act within their optimal parameters."

"Of course," Caroline said. "Sylvia's estimates, I presume?"

Nikolos snorted. "A Command-Tactician hardly needs advice and analysis from a simple Group Commander."

"I'm sure that's true," Caroline agreed, turning to look him square in the face. "But you're not the Command-Tactician. Sylvia is."

She couldn't make out the details of his face in the faint reflected light of the city around them. But the slight pause before he replied told her all she needed to know. "Really," he said at last. "Did she tell you that?"

Caroline shook her head. "I saw the two of you during your war games practice Sunday night," she said. "You crossed the yard to talk to her, instead of the other way around. With Greens, that means she's the higher rank."

"Very good," Nikolos said, a rather forced touch of amusement coloring his voice. "She was right; you are a clever Human. So I stand revealed as a lowly Group Commander, do I?"

Caroline smiled into the darkness. Deception is a necessary part of warfare, Sylvia had told her back at their first meeting. Apparently, it was an ongoing one, as well. "You're not a Group Commander, either," she said. "You're a Persuader."

The silence this time was longer. "What makes you think that?" he asked, even the forced amusement gone from his voice now.

"Many things," Caroline told him, feeling a small flicker of satisfaction amid the tension and despair churning within her. She'd tumbled to this one too late for the information to do her any good. But caught in the middle of a situation where she had no control, it was nice to be able to surprise him, even a little. "For one thing, our Mr. Galen in the wheelhouse is being far too cooperative about having his yacht hijacked by over a hundred strangers. Only a Persuader could have kept him calm through all this."

"Aleksander could have worked with him before the yacht left the city."

"Too risky," Caroline said. "I know Sylvia well enough to know she would have insisted on having a Persuader on board in case of last-minute changes."

"So there's a Persuader aboard," Nikolos conceded. "But as you've already pointed out, we have over a hundred men and women here. Why me?"

"Because of something you said to me back in the library," Caroline said. "Do you remember? You must understand that what I do, I do for the best. Even then it struck me as the kind of stylized phrasing we'd heard from the children at Vasilis and Iolanthe's homestead. The kind of formal phrasing Greens really seem to like."

"And what exactly did you conclude it meant?"

"I don't know if it means anything more than what it actually says," Caroline told him. "What's important is that it's the same phrase Cyril used when he spoke into my mind outside our apartment Friday morning, when he was ordering me to bring Melantha to him."

This time the silence stretched uncomfortably out into the night. Caroline stood beside the rail, listening to the stutter of the engines and the hissing of the yacht's wake, wondering uneasily if she'd gone too far. How dangerous to him was this secret he'd held for the last three-quarters of a century, and what lengths would he go to to protect it? Below her, the water of the Upper Bay churned and roiled with the boat's passage. A single heave, perhaps preceded by a thrust through her ribs from his trassk to make doubly sure...

"A very clever Human indeed," he murmured at last. "Fortunately, no one who matters would ever take your word against mine, let alone your word against mine and Sylvia's."

He straightened up. "Besides, by dawn tomorrow, it will be irrelevant," he added. "The Grays will be gone, and no one will care who or what I am. Enjoy the rest of the cruise, Caroline Human Whittier.

The rising sun will shine on a brighter day for us all." Turning his back on her, he headed across the gently rolling deck.

With a trembling sigh, Caroline returned her gaze to the towering buildings of Manhattan rising from the dark water ahead of her. No, she thought distantly, the rising sun wouldn't shine on happiness. It would shine on a very dark day indeed.

Unless someone did something. Unless she did something.

Getting a fresh grip on the railing, she gazed across the water at the lights of her home ahead, and tried desperately to think.

"We have a confirmation on that ten-count off the boat at Gowanus Bay," the soft voice came over the S.W.A.T. van radio. "Headed south in loose formation toward Fourth Avenue. Observers moving to shadow."

"Acknowledged," Messerling said, leaning over the radio operator's shoulder toward the microphone. "Make damn sure you stay out of sight. Any luck getting a reading on the number still aboard?"

"Nothing firm," the voice said. "They weren't there long enough for an IR analysis before they were on the move again and out of range of the more sensitive gear. But what we did get is consistent with the eighty to a hundred that Gavin's readings gave us."

Messerling glanced back over his shoulder at Powell and Cerreta, and Powell suppressed a grimace.

He'd been hoping that Fierenzo's estimate of their opponents' troop strength had been pessimistically high. Instead, if anything, it might have been a shade low. "Understood," the S.W.A.T. commander said, turning back to the mike. "What's their current heading?"

"Looks like they're making for Manhattan," the officer reported. "We got a short sound bite on the telescope mike just before they pulled away that indicated they were heading home."

"Acknowledged," Messerling said coolly. "We're ready for them."

"One other thing," the voice said. "We got a positive on Whittier on deck as they were offloading, and we've got an eighty percent confirmation that they had Galen in the wheelhouse."

Powell felt his jaw tighten. Of all the unpleasant situations he'd had to face in his career as a cop, hostage standoffs were the ones he hated the most. Especially standoffs where he actually knew one of the hostages.