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The holo record shifted to a view of the terrorist's main pla
Ninhursag MacMahan slammed the hold button and stood slowly, face pale as death, and walked into the holo to peer at one particular trophy. She licked her lips, trying to tell herself she was wrong, but she wasn't, and she whispered a soft, frightened prayer as she stared at her worst nightmare: a second-stage initiator from Tsien Tao-ling's super bomb.
The council room was quiet. Colin and Jiltanith sat between Gerald Hatcher and Tsien Tao-ling, and their faces were as pale as Ninhursag's own.
"Sweet Jesu," Jiltanith murmured at last. "Thy news is worse than e'er I durst let myself believe, 'Hursag, yet 'tis God's Own grace thou'st beagled out this threat."
"Amen to that." Colin frowned down at the tabletop. "Does this suggest a link between the Sword and Mister X?"
"I don't think so," Ninhursag said. "None of the survivors can tell us where that particular 'trophy' came from, but they're all souvenirs of attacks their cell carried out. I wish we did know where they got it; at least then we'd have some idea where to look for whoever has the thing. It's possible the Sword hit them before they finished it, but it wouldn't mean much if they did. Whoever's behind this must've made more than one copy of the plans. Losing one construction team might slow them down; it wouldn't stop them."
"Lord." Colin pulled on his nose, and Ninhursag saw the lines months of worry had carved in his face. "Gerald? Tao-ling?"
" 'Hursag is correct," Tsien said. Hatcher only nodded, and Colin sighed.
"Okay, 'Hursag. Where do we go from here?"
"We start from a worst-case assumption. First, the thing's been built. Second, the people who probably have it killed eighty thousand people just to get the twins. Third—and scariest of all—the Sword may have captured it." A visible shudder ran through her audience at that thought.
"I think we're still fairly safe in assuming Earth isn't the target. I'm not going to cast that in stone, but I simply ca
"Agreed." Colin pulled on his nose again, then looked at Hatcher. "Get hold of Adrie
The admiral nodded, and he turned back to Ninhursag, nodding for her to continue.
"While they do that," she said, "I intend to start an immediate high-priority search of Narhan and Birhat. Maker knows that bomb's a damnably small target, but Battle Fleet can carry out centimeter-by-centimeter scans without tipping Mister X. It'll take time, especially under a security blackout, but if it's out there, Gerald's and my people will find it."
She paused, and her dark eyes met her Emperor's.
"I only pray we find it in time," she said softly.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Tibold Rarikson lay beside Lord Sean atop the cliff and watched his youthful commander pretend to use a spyglass.
The ex-Guardsman's bushy mustache hid his smile as the black-haired giant made a great show of adjusting the glass. Tibold didn't know why the Captain-General tried to hide his more-than-human abilities, but he was willing to play along, even though Lord Sean and Lord Tamman were probably the only people who thought they were fooling anyone.
In all his years, Tibold had never met anyone like these two. They were young; he'd seen enough hot-blooded young kinokha in his career to know that, and Lord Tamman was as impulsive as he was young. But Lord Sean... There was a youthful recklessness in his eyes, and a matching abundance of ideas behind them, but there was also discipline, and Tibold had known gray-bearded marshals less willing to listen to suggestions. And though he tried to hide it, Tibold had seen how his strange, black eyes warmed whenever the Angel Sandy was about. He treated her with the utmost respect, yet Tibold had the odd suspicion that was more for the army's benefit than for the angel's. Indeed, the angel seemed to watch for Lord Sean's reaction to whatever she might be saying even as she said it.
Tibold hadn't figured out why an angel should—well, defer wasn't quite the word, though it came close—even to Lord Sean's opinion, but there was no denying Lord Sean and Lord Tamman were unca
Yet neither seemed upset when he corrected them. Indeed, Lord Sean had spent hours picking his brain, combining Tibold's experience with things he did know to create the army they now led, and he'd been delighted by Tibold's insistence upon remorseless drill—one more thing whose importance young officers frequently failed to appreciate.
And if their ignorance in some matters was surprising, their knowledge in others was amazing! He'd thought them mad to emphasize firearms over polearms. A joharn-armed musketeer did well to fire thirty shots an hour, while the heavier malagor could manage little more than twenty. There was simply no way musketeers could break a determined charge... until Lord Sean opened his bag of tricks. And, of course, until the angels intervened.
Even Tibold had felt... unsettled... when the Angel Sandy had Father Stomald stack a thousand joharns in a small, blind valley and leave them there overnight. Indeed, he'd crept back—strictly against Father Stomald's orders—late that night... and crept away again much more quietly than he'd come when he found all thousand of them had disappeared!
But they'd been back by morning, and Tibold hadn't argued when the Angel Sandy had him pile two thousand in the same valley the next night. Not after he'd seen what had happened to the first lot.
Changing wooden ramrods for iron had been but the first step, and Lord Sean had accompanied it by introducing paper cartridges to replace the wooden tubes hung from a musketeer's bandoleer. A man could carry far more of them, and all he had to do was bite off the end, pour the powder down the barrel, and spit in his ball. The paper wrapper even served as a wad!
The thing Lord Sean called a "ring bayonet" was another deceptively simple i