Shiva Option

He smiled again, sadly, and reached out to rest one clawed hand on each officer's shoulder.

"It will not happen at once, and I think I will be gone before it does, but it will happen, Clan Brothers. And so I charge you to guard our fire-the true fire of the Farshalah'kiah. Your fire and mine, Fang Aandersaahn's and Eeevaan's. Remember not just for yourselves, but for those who will come after, and in the fullness of time, pass that same treasure to your successors, as I have passed it to those who have succeeded Eeevaan and myself."

"We will, Clan Lord," Zhaarnak promised quietly, and Prescott nodded.

"Good," Kthaara said very, very softly, and his hands squeezed once. No longer young, no longer strong, those hands, and yet in that instant, infinitely powerful. "Good," he repeated, and then drew a long, deep breath and shook himself.

"Enough of such solemnity!" he a

He laughed, and they laughed with him, then followed him from the gallery. Behind them, she hung upon the wall, still smiling with all the deep, sweet promise of life.

"But, Agamemnon," Bettina Wister protested, "you know Admiral Mukerji could never have done the dreadful things that woman accuses him of!"

Assemblyman Waldeck looked at his nasal-voiced colleague with expressionless contempt and wondered if she'd actually bothered to view Sandra Delmore's report. Probably not, he decided. At best, she'd had one of her staffers view it and abstract its "salient features" for her.

Waldeck, on the other hand, had viewed it, and he had no doubt whatsoever that it was essentially accurate. The only question in his mind was who'd leaked the damning information to the press.

LeBlanc, he thought. It was probably LeBlanc. He knew vice admiral was as high as any intelligence analyst was ever likely to go, and besides, he's retiring. One of his spies or informants probably reported it to him at the time, and he's just been waiting for the right moment to use it. It's exactly the sort of thing he would do.

". . . and even if it were true," Wister continued, "he was only doing his duty. That awful woman can call it 'cowardice' if she wants to, but I call it simple prudence. Of course any responsible military officer who knew what the policy of his government was would try to restrain a uniformed thug like Prescott who was clearly taking unwarranted risks with the fleet committed to his allegation and its perso

"Bettina," Waldeck said, much more calmly than he felt, "Prescott is hardly one of my favorite people, either. And, like you, I've always found Terence has a proper appreciation for the relationship between the civilian authorities and the military chain of command. But it could certainly be argued that calling the commander of a major fleet actually engaged in battle against the enemy insane in front of his entire staff and flag deck command crew represents a case of . . . questionable judgment."

"But Prescott is insane!" Wister shot back so stridently Waldeck winced. "The people may not realize it now, but they will! I'll make it my special task to see to it that the truth about his bungling of the so-called 'April's Fool' battle-and at the Battle of AP-5, as well-is made a part of the public record! 'War hero,' indeed! Why, he might as well be one of those horrid Orions himself!"

Waldeck opened his mouth . . . then closed it. Sometimes a man simply had to know when there was no longer any point trying to explain, and this was one of them. Mukerji had been a useful tool for decades, but the only thing to do with any tool was to discard it when it broke. And thanks to Sandra Delmore's reports, Mukerji was definitely a broken tool.

At this particular moment the Terran electorate-including Wister's mush-minded constituents-were convinced that Raymond Porter Prescott had single-handedly defeated the entire Bug omnivoracity . . . and probably killed the last Bug emperor in hand-to-hand combat. The fact that any halfway competent flag officer could have defeated the Bugs with the immense material superiority the Corporate Worlds had provided was completely lost upon the hero-worshipping proles, and they would have no mercy on anyone who dared to trifle with the object of their veneration.

It was a pity, really, but there it was. That blind adulation was the true explanation for the fury which had swept that electorate when Delmore's "exposé" of Mukerji's . . . confrontation with Prescott broke. If a few more years had passed, the Heart World sheep would have forgotten all about any sense of indebtedness to Prescott. But they hadn't, and as the public denunciation swelled, the rest of the media-sensing blood in the water, and not particularly caring whose blood it was-had picked the story up with glee. They could be counted upon to keep it alive for months, at the very least.

Unless, of course, the Naval Affairs Committee took action against the source of the public's discontent. Which would necessarily mean tossing Mukerji off the sled before the wolves caught it.

The real question in Waldeck's mind was what to do about Wister. He'd been able to sit on her during the war, but her present stridency wasn't a good sign. The idiot really believed the nonsense she spouted, and the last six or seven years of being forcibly restrained from airing her idiocy in public appeared to have pushed her over the edge. She seemed unable to understand that the mere fact that the war was over wasn't going to automatically and instantly restore the universe she'd inhabited before the Bugs came along. And like any petulant, spoiled adolescent who wanted back the world in which she had been the center of everything that mattered, she was perfectly prepared to pitch a public tantrum until she got her way. Which could have . . . unpleasant consequences for her political allies.

No, he decided. She'd been another useful tool, but, like Mukerji, she was scarcely irreplaceable. Of course, it would have to be done carefully. In fact, it might be that the Delmore story offered an opportunity to kill two birds with a single stone. If he handled it right, he could distance himself from the Mukerji fallout by making it appear that Wister had been the political admiral's patron. And if he gave her enough rope in the public hearings, let her babble away in public the way she was now, he could confidently count on her to destroy any credibility she might have retained if she or Mukerji tried to deny the relationship. And when Chairman Waldeck found himself "forced" by the mounting examples of Mukerji's incompetence and cowardice to turn against his political protector Wister-more in sorrow than in anger, of course . . .

It was always so convenient to have someone else one could use as the anchor to send one's own unfortunate political baggage straight to the bottom.

He considered the proposition for a few more seconds, then nodded mentally, and turned to Wister with an expression of thoughtful concern.

"Protecting Mukerji against these charges will be politically risky, Bettina," he told her in a carefully chosen tone.

"Protecting him against the vicious accusations of a violent, bloodsoaked butcher like Prescott," Wister shot back, completely ignoring the fact that Raymond Prescott had yet to make a single public statement in the case, "is the Right Thing to Do!"