"Skipper!"
Angelique Jefferson stared at Alicia in shocked, horrified disbelief as Shernsiya shuddered under the impact of the pistol rounds and then crashed to the floor.
The lieutenant whirled to face the other Rishathan prisoners, her weapon snapping up into the firing position in anticipation of their berserk charge.
But there was no charge. Instead, there was a wailing burst of high-pitched Rishathan, and the kneeling prisoners bent to press their faces to the floor.
Jefferson allowed her plasma rifle to return to the "safe" position and turned slowly back towards Alicia. But Alicia wasn't even looking at her lieutenant. She was kneeling on the floor beside Shernsiya, and as Jefferson watched, she reached out and laid one hand on the Rish's massive, heaving chest.
"My thanks . . . War Mother," the mortally wounded matriarch got out.
"It was your choice, farthi chir," Alicia said quietly.
"Indeed." The Rish managed a snarling chuckle. "But I could not tell you. I am honored that you guessed."
She and Alicia looked at one another for a moment, and then the Rish waved one hand at the other prisoners.
"I must speak to my eldest daughter," she said, panting with the pain of her wounds, and Alicia nodded.
Shernsiya raised her voice, calling a name, and Alicia looked up quickly.
"Let her pass!" she said sharply to Jefferson, and the lieutenant nodded. It was a nod of obedience, not of understanding, and Alicia smiled mirthlessly.
A shadow loomed over her as another Rish appeared at her side. The newcomer went to one knee beside Shernsiya, reaching out to lay a clawed hand on the dying matriarch's chest beside Alicia's.
"I am here, Mother of Mothers," she said.
"Good, Rethmeryk," Shernsiya said. Her own hand moved again, indicating Alicia.
"This war mother of the humans has given you life, Eldest Daughter. You will take it, and all of my daughters with you. You will give the order I cannot and lead them from this place, return them to their own sphere. The clan's honor is clean once more with my death. I name you farthi chir in my place, and I command you to remember with honor this war mother who has given our clan back its life."
"As you bid, so shall it be, Mother of Mothers," Rethmeryk said, and turned to Alicia.
"How shall we name you in the annals of Clan Theryian, War Mother?" she asked.
"My name is DeVries—Alicia DeVries," Alicia said, and Rethmeryk jerked as if she'd been struck. She started to open her mouth again, then stopped and looked down at Shernsiya.
The dying matriarch seemed as stunned as her line-daughter. She stared at Alicia, then looked back at Rethmeryk.
"Go, Eldest Daughter," she said softly. "I see here the hand of the Greatest Mother. Symmetry must be served."
"Yes, Mother of Mothers," Rethmeryk agreed. She looked back at Alicia. "War Mother, may I use our communication equipment?"
"You may," Alicia agreed, her own eyes on Shernsiya's face.
"Skipper?" Jefferson sounded totally out of her depth, and Alicia smiled without humor.
"Let her use the com, Angelique," she said. "She needs to pass the surrender order."
"Just like that?" Jefferson waved at the dying matriarch. "They're just going to surrender after that?"
"Especially after 'that,'" Alicia said.
Jefferson looked at her, then drew a deep breath and nodded.
"Whatever you say, Skipper," she said, and beckoned for Rethmeryk to accompany her towards an intact communications console.
"War Mother Alicia," Shernsiya said, "this is not the first time we have fought, you and I, though you knew it not, and we did not meet then hand-to-hand. Nor were you ever to know. But the Greatest Mother orders the universe as She would have it, and I would not have fallen into your hand, nor would you have spared my line-daughters, had She not willed it.
"Symmetry must be served—a gift for a gift, War Mother. And as your gift to me, so mine to you will have two edges. I do not think you will thank me for it, but by the steel in your soul, by the honor in your hand, by the truth in your mouth, so shall you have it, and I think you will count the having worth the pain."
Alicia knelt very still, her gaze fixed on those glorious golden eyes.
"Bid your war daughters stand back, War Mother Alicia," Shernsiya said. "My gift is for you alone."
"Give us some space here, Angelique," Alicia said without looking up. "You, too, Ludovic," she told Thönes.
Her wingman looked briefly rebellious, but after a heartbeat of hesitation, he followed Jefferson across the room.
"Thank you, War Mother," Shernsiya said. "Now listen well; my time is brief."
* * *
"That was something else, Captain DeVries!" the Marine major said jubilantly as Alicia stepped through the inner hatch of the transport/command ship HMS MacArthur.
"Man," the major continued, "I've never heard of Lizards just rolling over this way!"
"I'm glad it worked out," Alicia told him, and her own voice was flat, her tone almost absentminded. The Marine didn't seem to notice, nor did he notice the clipped-off syllables of the tick.
"So am I," he said. "And a lot of other Wasps aboard this bucket are going to want to buy you drinks!"
"I'm sure we can work something out." Alicia smiled briefly, and the major chuckled.
"I hope you've got gills," he said. "But, in the meantime, what can I do for you?"
"I need to talk to Colonel Watts. That's why I jumped one of your recovery boats instead of waiting for Marguerite Johnsen's."
"Not a problem, Captain. Uh, if you don't mind leaving your armor in our Morgue, that is."
"I can do that."
"In that case, Captain, step this way."
* * *
Alicia walked down the passage towards the portion of MacArthur set aside for the Expeditionary Force CO's staff. The talkative major who'd welcomed her aboard had insisted on escorting her personally, and she felt more than a few curious gazes as she walked along behind him in the utilitarian catsuit she'd worn under her armor. Most of the people behind those gazes seemed to know who she was, but they were giving her space, and a distant, frozen corner of her brain was grateful.
"Here we are, Captain DeVries," the major said. Two other Marines with the brassards of ship's police stood outside the intelligence center door, and the Marine officer nodded to them.
"Captain DeVries to see Colonel Watts," he said.
"Yes, Sir," the senior of the two sentries acknowledged, and Alicia stepped past them.
"Alley!" Watts looked up with a smile as she entered the compartment. "Wonderful job—just wonderful!" he congratulated her. "I know I had my doubts, but you and Charlie Company have pulled it off again."
"Thanks," Alicia said, and wondered how she kept from screaming.
"What can I do for you?" Watts asked her, and her mouth moved in someone else's smile.
"I need to talk to you," she said, glancing around the compartment. "Privately." She half-smiled apologetically at the other Marine's present. "I'm afraid this is pretty much need-to-know stuff."
Watts looked at her for a moment, his eyes hooded somehow, then shrugged.
"No problem," he said. "Step into my office."
He gestured at a side passage, and Alicia followed him down it to a much smaller compartment. He waved her through the door, then followed her in, stepped past her, and seated himself behind the desk.
"Have a seat," he invited, pointing at one of the two chairs in front of his desk.
"No, thank you," she said. "I've got too much post-op adrenaline still pumping."
"Not too surprising, I suppose," Watts said as she began to pace back and forth across the cramped space. He watched her for several seconds, then cleared his throat.
"You said you needed to talk to me," he reminded her.
"Yes. Yes, I did."
Alicia paused in her pacing and stood facing him across his desk.
"Tell me, Colonel—Wadislaw," she said after a moment, "how long have you been in intelligence?"
"Excuse me?" Watts looked puzzled, and her lips twitched another smile.
"Trust me, it's relevant. How long?"
"Just about since the Academy," he said slowly. "I caught the Office of Military Intelligence's eye in my junior or senior year. Why?"
"Back before Shallingsport, Vartkes Kalachian—you remember him? He was one of the guys in my squad? No?" She shrugged at his look of polite incomprehension. "No reason you should, I guess. But he was assigned to our embassy on Rishatha Prime, one of the embassy guards. He said he remembered you—probably because of the way the Lizards PNGed you."
"Kalachian? Kalachian." Watts pursed his lips, then shook his head. "No, sorry, Alley. I don't remember him. And I'm afraid I still don't see where you're going with this."
"Well, I know you've spent a lot of time since then working with the Cadre, as well as with Marine Intelligence. And I know Brigadier Sampson specifically requested you when he was alerted for Louvain. I hadn't realized until very recently, though, that you were one of the Corps' leading authorities on the Sphere."
"I wouldn't put it quite that way myself," Watts said slowly. "I've put in my time studying the Rish—I understand you have, too. And I've had a few successes against them. But I'd hardly call me a 'leading authority' on them."
"Really?" She tilted her head to one side. "I'm surprised to hear that."
"Why?" He was beginning to sound a little less relaxed, she noticed, watching him from inside the tick's time-slowing cocoon.
"You knew, of course, that Clan Theryian was responsible for the Louvain attack," she said, and his eyes narrowed at the apparent non sequitur.
"We all did," he said slowly, tipping back in his chair and opening the top drawer of his desk to withdraw a stylus with his left hand. He left the drawer open as he drummed absentmindedly on the desktop with the end of the stylus, obviously thinking hard.
"Of course, I doubt it was ever Theryian's idea," he continued. "Somebody on the Great Council of War Mothers with a grudge obviously engineered this 'honor' for them." He shrugged. "The Sphere is such a catfight that somebody always has a dagger out for somebody else."
"That's true," Alicia agreed. "On the other hand, when the Sphere has one of the clans 'volunteer' for something like this, they don't usually push it all of the way to mysorthayak. That's actually one of the things that bothered me about this operation from the beginning. Did it bother you?"
"Not especially." He shrugged. "I agree, it was unusual. But I was more concerned with the practical consequences than with wondering why it happened."
"Oh, I'm sure you were," she said softly, and his eyes widened.
"What are you trying to say?" he demanded, his voice harsher.
"You must really have been in two minds when you heard about this one," she said. "Clan Theryian, and mysorthayak—and there you were, Brigadier Sampson's specifically requested intelligence officer. Tell me, how did it feel when they told you where you were going?"
The stylus stopped drumming. He sat very still behind the desk, his eyes fixed on her face, and her smile would have frozen the heart of a star.
"You knew, didn't you?" she said, even more softly. "You knew why Theryian drew Louvain. The Lizards aren't like humans in a lot of ways . . . including how long they wait, sometimes, for vengeance. Over six years in this case, wasn't it?"
"I . . . don't know what you mean," he said hoarsely.
"Oh, yes, you do. It was Theryian who served as the Sphere's conduit to the Freedom Alliance. Theryian was in charge of the entire Shallingsport operation."
"That's . . . insane! Shallingsport wasn't a Rishathan operation!"
"Yes it was," she said. "I doubt that very many of the FALA rank and file ever knew it, but it explains a lot, doesn't it? Like the Alliance's 'fundraising' ability. And the connection to surplus military hardware no one's ever been able to nail down. They didn't have any connection to nail down; it came direct through the Sphere, courtesy of Clan Theryian."
"For what conceivable reason?" Watts demanded. He was perspiring now, she noticed.
"For exactly the reason everyone assumed—to destroy a Cadre Company and, hopefully, provoke a bloodbath. To blacken the Cadre's reputation, weaken the Empire's prestige, provoke a shift in Rogue World public opinion, and, of course, do what the Sphere does constantly—test the Empire's resolve. And Theryian got the assignment because its Mother of Mothers was one of the Sphere's best intelligence analysts and planners . . . and something of a specialist in corrupting and manipulating human agents.
"But the operation went south on them, didn't it?" Watts sat silently, staring at her. "Charlie Company wasn't wiped out—not completely. And only a handful of the hostages died, and none of the FALA troops got off the planet alive. So what was supposed to be a total defeat for the Cadre, turned into something else. Instead of dying, like we were supposed to, we got the hostages out. We turned all of the things they wanted to accomplish around, because . . . we . . . didn't . . . all . . . die."
Her voice was deathly soft, and Watts' hands began to move nervously on his desk top.
"But the Sphere's never been very forgiving to its own, has it? And, like you just said, it's always a catfight between the clans, there's always someone looking for an opportunity to cripple a rival. And that's what happened to Theryian. When the Louvain operation came up, Theryian was given a chance to 'atone' for its failure at Shallingsport. It was sent in to do the testing this time, but the clan's enemies weren't willing to settle for seeing Theryian's fighting strength reduced, costing it hundreds of its war daughters, or even its best war mothers. Oh, no. Not this time. Instead, they sent the clan's farthi chir—its Mother of Mothers. They sent her in, and they ordered her to hold Louvain at all costs, even a mysorthayak defense. And she couldn't refuse, because she owed an honor debt to the Great Council because of the Shallingsport failure. She had to go, and because she was here, because her honor now demanded that the clan hold Louvain at all costs, not one of her line-daughters could surrender as long as she was alive. And she couldn't order them to surrender, because of her honor debt.
"Louvain was supposed to be Clan Theryian's grave just as surely as Shallingsport was supposed to be the Company's."
The silence in the small compartment was total, and Alicia's eyes were jade ice.
"And here you were," she said. "You knew who that was down there, and you really are an 'expert' on the Rish. So you knew why she was down there, too. You must have been terrified."
"I don't—" Watts swallowed hard. "Why should I have been anything of the sort?" he demanded.
"Because you couldn't be certain. You couldn't know which of her senior line-daughters might have known, might have been captured and given up the information under interrogation. Not even a mysorthayak defense can be guaranteed to kill everyone involved, can it? But you had an answer for that, too, didn't you?"
She showed her teeth and flowed closer to his desk.
"I checked, Wadislaw," she half-crooned. "You said Brigadier Sampson had instructed his fire support ships to begin planning for HVW strikes. But what you didn't say, when you were talking with Uncle Arthur and me, was that you were the one who suggested that option to the Brigadier in the first place."
"I . . . I . . ."
Watts shrank back in his chair.
"It would have worked, too, if not for my own little brainstorm," she told him, and her voice was completely calm now, almost conversational. "The HVW would have gone down, and every single Rish down there would have been dead, and so there wouldn't have been any prisoners, anyone to tell us which human intelligence specialist has been a double agent, working for the Sphere ever since his initial assignment to Rishatha Prime. Or to explain to us why that double agent's assignment to Fifth Battalion was the decisive factor in choosing Shallingsport and Charlie Company. Or to tell us how that double agent was supposed to control the operational briefing and make certain no one looked closely enough at Shallingsport to realize what we were actually walking into. Make certain we picked the right LZ for their ambush."
Wadislaw Watts looked into those frozen eyes and Death looked back at him.
He lunged forward, his right hand darting into the opened top drawer of his desk. His fingers closed on the butt of the CHK in it, and his eyes widened in astonishment and the beginning of hope as he actually got the drawer open, got the pistol out of it, while Alicia only watched.
But Alicia was riding the tick.
She watched him, watched his hand moving slowly, so slowly. She watched his hand start forward, watched it touch the pistol. She saw him pick it up, saw his thumb disengage the safety, and only then did she move.
Watts cried out in shock as her left hand flashed across the desk like a striking cobra. Its bladed edge slammed into his wrist in the fairche leagadh, the mallet's fall, of the deillseag òrd, and his cry of shock became a scream of pain as that wrist broke. The pistol went off, sending a three-shot burst into the top of his desk, and the recoil threw it from his suddenly strengthless grip.
The penetrators punched neat, splinter-feathered holes through the desk's heavy, extruded plastic, and the thunder of the pistol's discharge was deafening, but Wadislaw Watts scarcely noticed. He was too busy screaming in terror as Alicia DeVries' right hand reached out and pulled him effortlessly across the desk towards her.
He was at least a centimeter taller than she was, and he kept himself fit, but it didn't matter. His left hand hammered at her right wrist, and her left hand drove the tips of her fingers into the inside of his elbow joint like a splitting wedge in the mear bruididh. He screamed again, and she released her grip on him. Her knee drove the desk back, out of the way, and her right hand slammed into his rib cage. Bone splintered, and he shrieked as her left hand slammed up into his groin like a hammer.
He folded up around the agony, and her right kneecap came up to meet him. It crunched into his jaw, and his head snapped back up as more bone shattered. Her left hand caught his hair, wrenching his head back, and the edge of her right hand shattered his left cheekbone. Then it arced back and crushed his other cheekbone. Blood fountained from his smashed nose and mouth, and her left knee came up into his ribs and abdomen—not once, but again, again, and again.
He was no longer screaming. The sounds were those of a trapped animal, desperate for the agony to end, and she pulled his head back again, baring his throat for the death blow.
And that was when the hands closed on her from behind.
Watts flew back away from her, thudding heavily across the desk, and she turned her head—slowly, slowly—as the two Marines seized her. They'd responded more quickly than she'd expected, a corner of her brain noted. Had it been the pistol shots? Or had Watts' screams been their first warning?
She twisted, throwing one of them off, and reached for Watts again. But the second Marine still had a grip on her, and he heaved backward desperately. Her left leg flexed, maintaining her balance, but he'd slowed her just enough for the first Marine to lunge back to his feet between her and Watts.
She gazed at the face in front of her. The face of a young man who didn't understand what was happening, who only knew that his own superior officer was under attack. Who didn't want to hurt Alicia, but who was reaching for his holstered side arm.
He didn't even guess, she thought almost pityingly. Didn't have a clue what he truly faced. If she chose, his hand would never reach that pistol. She was riding the tick, and his throat was open, his solar plexus . . . the entire front of his body was wide open to her attack. She could have killed him three different ways before he touched that gun.
But she knew the look in his eyes. The only way she could get to Watts was through him, and she couldn't do that. She couldn't kill him, however much Wadislaw Watts deserved to die.
And so she allowed the Marine behind her to pull her back. Let the two of them tackle her, drive her to the decksole. And as she hit, she watched Wadislaw Watts ooze off his desk and slither bonelessly to the deck with her.